Because usually I'm used to kill capture missions.

Go in and kill every bad guy that's in there.

And I'm using the drones to look all over the area to look for IEDs.

And we got to the top of the mountain, I'm cleared hot to shoot these guys.

So I'm chasing one of them in my scope.

I say, Tori, you get the trail guy, I'll get the lead Guy on the T.I.A.

2, 5, 4, 3.

The machine's guns start opening up.

The JTAC comes up with the mortars.

Spectre is shooting 105 shells.

Boom, boom.

And gun.

And all of a sudden I start seeing rounds impacting mine right next to him, right below my feet.

He didn't put on his suppressor.

They're dialed in on me.

All of a sudden I get hit in my back.

Screaming, litzes down, litzes.

Dan.

Brian.

We go back a ways.

We go back.

Yeah, we go back a ways.

And I'm really excited for this conversation for a multiple, multitude of reasons.

One world, friends.

I went through my.

I went through a sniper course with you a long time ago in Vegas.

Yeah, you.

My daughter was nine years old when she went through one of your long range shooting courses and shot the mileage, the Ranger mile target on her third shot, which the Navy SEALs, they got like some 8 by 8 target.

And that was just too easy.

So we had to, we had to set her up on the right one.

But I've watched you go through several phases of your life from transitioning out of the military to kind of getting into the shooting world.

And you built an incredible program for a bit.

And then I, I feel, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that life kind of caught up to you because you are a special operations Ranger, you know, in the United States army.

You've done five deployments to Afghanistan, two of them as a mortarman and the rest as a sniper, which I want to get into those stories and what it took to get there.

But I knew you afterward and I've watched you go through some pretty rough times and some struggles where you ended up pretty much losing everything, disconnected for several years to refind yourself.

And during that time you found your faith, which all for it.

I absolutely love that.

I can see it has made you such an incredible man that you are now.

And I can put a lot of my credit into, obviously the same journey.

And now you've started an incredible program called the Ranch.

The Ranch Foundation.

The Ranch foundation, which you.

You struggle with substance abuse, suicide attempts, the works of being a war hardened veteran and getting out and then realizing that it's.

There's a lot that we carry with this.

And you have gone through such a healing process.

I mean, you disappeared for a while.

I think we were looking for you at parts and you're in this state and you're here and you look like a homeless hippie at one point.

And now you are giving back to the community after healing yourself and being able to get yourself corrected in the right way and obviously leaning on God during this time.

And here you are now, you're giving back to vets and you happen to be in town and obviously I'm not going to let you roll through without having a conversation with you.

So, Dan, thank you for joining us today.

First we got you got a bunch of boys in town.

So we're gonna get hit, get you guys hooked up with the Sour Bee.

I think the wife's got a bunch of cookies that she's gonna be whipping up here soon for you.

But we started it as a homeschool project and it turned into a business for us.

And yeah, so it's pretty awesome.

We like to give all of our guests a loaf of bread and some bunch of cookies and whatever we can give to them.

And then also at the same time, everybody that listens to the show likes to obviously support us and what we're doing and support the kids so they get to get in and get.

Get a little bit of some of the best sourdough that they're ever going to have in their life.

And I'll put my die on that hill because it's obviously my kids that are making it.

So.

Yeah, and I love it right here.

I just, I'm hungry now.

I want to try it out.

I don't know if you eat this one.

This is our prehistoric prop that.

Yeah, maybe not this one.

We left it up here once for a few days.

It came back and my wife's like, let's swap it out.

I'm like, yeah, it looks good.

We're fine.

So it looks like that McDonald's cheeseburger that somebody's had in their closet for like 25 years.

It's never made looks good to me.

But yeah, I'm definitely excited to have some later for sure.

And the boys are too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'll get you guys taken care.

All right, dude, we go back a ways.

Let's have this conversation because there's been some gaps in there that you disappeared and stuff for a while, which I want to cover.

So, Dan, who are you?

Where are you from?

Yeah, so Daniel Litzenberger and I grew up in Spokane, Washington.

I was stationed at Fort Lewis.

That's in Washington as well.

It's called joint base Lewis McCord now.

And yeah, growing up, you know, it was just to get into the childhood a little bit, because that's what really led to some of the trauma later.

Yeah, you know, I had some issues when I was a kid.

You know, I'd be sent to these facilities when I was 5 years old for essentially kids with bad behavior.

Okay.

There are some other things going on with my parents, you know, and want to be careful about talking about my parents because they.

They're completely different now with our family than they were back then.

But, you know, there's addiction involved and.

And some other things, some violence in the home, and now, you know, it.

I have some great parents that are great grand grandparents to my.

My nephews and to us kids.

But back then, they didn't really know how to handle me.

And so at 5 years old, my parents sent me to a facility one time where I don't really remember much, but the fact that it was Christmas Eve.

And my parents, they knew they couldn't get me to really go anywhere because if they said they were going to a facility to drop me off to get help, I would have ran away or something this bad.

At 5, I mean, I don't think I was that bad of my parents.

Just, you know, they were young.

They probably didn't know how to handle me.

Yeah.

And so I had, like, some anger issues.

But I was also.

When I was born, I almost died.

The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck.

Okay.

And so there's some trauma coming in to the world as well as, you know, my mom was a pretty hardcore addict.

What was her.

What was her drug?

She was doing some cocaine, and her big thing was alcohol.

So I don't know exactly what was going on.

You know, some of that me and my mom have talked about, which we're in a good place now.

Yeah.

And.

But I would go to these facilities and I would just learn how to be quiet.

I just wouldn't say anything.

And then the.

The people would come back to my parents and say, your kid's fine.

There's nothing wrong with him.

Why are you, you know, what's the deal?

And then I'd go back to acting bad when I got home, like, you know, and so they would continue to send me these facilities ever, you know, throughout my whole childhood, really, for sometimes three Weeks.

And I'd have to tell kids at school.

Then they asked where I was, you know, in first or second grade.

I'd have to say, I went.

I had pneumonia, and I was sick, and just kind of lie about what was going on.

But I. I've had mental health issues since I was a kid.

And.

And then that led to.

The biggest thing that happened to me was wanting to join the Army.

And what led to that was Forrest Gump, the movie.

You know, there's Lieutenant Dan in that.

And I was, you know, Dan as a kid.

And so when I saw it, I think I was, like, 6 years old.

I had seen the Vietnam scene where the sun comes out, and it's just all chaos.

You know, machine guns are going, and.

And Lieutenant Dan is getting dragged through the jungle shooting his 1911.

And I was just like, that's who I want to be.

I really just like, Lieutenant Dan.

I am Lieutenant Dan.

And I started training.

Like, I'd get sticks in the backyard and start playing, you know, Army.

I get with my friends when I was older, and we'd play paintball and airsoft and all that stuff.

But I always wanted to be in the army, and I believe it was the first time I really wanted to was because of the.

The Forrest Gump movie.

That's hilarious.

I've heard a lot of stories on why.

I like to ask vets why they join because, you know, everybody.

That's a first for me.

Really?

Yeah.

No, that was 100.

And even the green army, like, that style of Vietnam, even what they wore for their clothing and their gear, I was obsessed with it.

And I would go backpacking all the time as a kid, Loved going camping and making spears and going hunting, hunting bears in the woods and stuff, and.

But the big thing that happened when I was a kid that led me to join the army was 9 11, for sure.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, I had been training up until that point as a kid, but then when 911 hit, I was in seventh grade, and I knew I was going to war.

It was like, this is it.

Like.

And I was honestly afraid of missing it because, you know, I wasn't gonna be 18 for another five or six years.

So I started training, and I was.

Started going backpacking in the woods.

I started learning, getting with mentors and learning how to disassemble an M4 and take.

Put back together and do map reading and stuff like that.

So I was.

Oh, yeah, I was all about joining the military.

Actually, it was the Marines first.

I want to be a Marine but they wouldn't take me because I had so much issues as a kid.

I was like, in and out of juvie sometimes and had some legal issues.

So the army actually was the ones that said that they'd take me.

They did a waiver or something, so.

And then that led to basic training, where, you know, I wasn't always wanting to be a Ranger.

Actually, I was the opposite.

I didn't want to be a Ranger because I thought those guys were crazy.

I had seen Black Hawk down when I was in high school and was like, these guys are elite.

They're a different level.

I'm not.

I'm just a normal soldier.

I wanted to go just Iraq is like a saw gunner.

That was my thing.

I just want to be a saw gunner.

Yeah.

And in basic training, my drill sergeant had came up to me.

I'd done pretty well in basic training when it comes to my scores and stuff.

And he said, I want you to try out to be a Ranger.

And I.

At first I was like, no, I don't want to be a Ranger Joe Sergeant.

And he's like, well, I want you to think about it for 24 hours.

And I thought about it.

My friends going to be Rangers said they.

There's a base up at Fort Lewis, Washington, and that's close to Spokane.

Right.

At least across the state, I can be close to friends and family.

And so I had some motivation to pass, so I went to selection.

And that.

I guess I don't want to glance past RIP because that was a pretty intense experience for a lot of.

Okay, so let's talk about that.

So you did you go.

How long did you.

From graduating basic training to going to Ranger rip, which is the pre.

Qual to Ranger School.

Correct.

If I'm.

RIP is the Ranger Indoctrination Program.

It's not called that anymore.

It's called Ranger Assessment Selection Program.

Okay.

But back in 07, it was called RIP and that's basically selection for Rangers.

That's the.

That's the wing out a bunch of the.

Immediately.

Like that gets you to Ranger Battalion as a private in Ranger battalion, which is one of the first steps.

But then once you go through it as a private Ranger battalion and you do a deployment, you do a training cycle, then you do a deployment, then you come back and they say, okay, now you're ready for Ranger School, which is a leadership school where you're going to become a leader now in the Ranger Regiment.

So then you go to Ranger school, and then once you get your tab, you have your Scroll.

And you have your tab.

Now you're a leader in the Ranger regiment.

Not that you weren't before.

As.

As a Ranger.

You know, people, there's rangers that don't have their tabs, but that's kind of the marker of you're ready to be a leader and they send you to Ranger school.

So even though you graduate rip, back then, are you, Are you considered a Ranger at that point?

Yes.

Right.

When you graduate rip, you get your tambourine.

Rangers lead the way and you.

All right, let's talk about RIP then, because I've never had anybody on the show.

So you go from straight from boot camp to rip, or is there any down.

There's a little bit of.

There's.

You go to boot camp, which it's.

They have this thing called AIT, which is like your advanced.

I forget what it's called, but it's for mortars.

You would go learn about mortars for a week.

Okay, for three weeks or whatever it was.

And then after that you go to airborne school, which is a three week school.

And it's.

Airborne school is just like learning how to jump out of planes.

You know, it wasn't too terribly hard or anything, but.

So you had a little break between basics training and Ranger indoctrination program.

Ranger selection, essentially.

But once you get to Ranger indoctrination program, it's very.

It was very intense.

And it's hard to describe because it's a lot of hazing.

The whole thing was hazing the entire time.

And back then it was four weeks.

And I mean, some of the things they would do, I mean, one of the nights they had us pack up all of our stuff and bring it back down, or down to the blacktop, they called it.

And it was like two in the morning and they're like, okay, disassemble your bunks and then put it back together on the blacktop.

And then they say you're sleeping on the blacktop.

Then they have us disassemble it and go put it back up.

And by that time it's time to wake up and you're starting the day.

Lots of running, you know, up and down hills all over.

Fort Benning.

Intense hazing, where it's just like bear crawling.

And they call them kangaroo.

What do they have when they hang around your neck and they hang below?

It's like kangaroo pouch crawls or something.

I've never heard of those ones.

I mean, I didn't hear about most of the stuff.

I don't remember the names, but they Just get creative on trying to get you to quit.

The whole point was getting people to quit as many as they could each day.

Do you remember how many you started with versus how many finished?

Yeah, we started, actually the Ranger.

The indoctrination program was like 250, but then the.

The maybe it's 200, 250, but then the PT test knocked out a bunch.

And then.

Is that the first thing that you do when you get there?

That's like the first thing.

And then I think there's a swim test and some other things that kind of filter out to where there's like 150 left.

And then for four weeks, they're just hazing.

One of the days, this guy named Siren Gonzalez, he was an Olympic runner and he would just run up and down this hill at Benning and say, we're not going to quit until we get 11 people to quit today.

And I don't know where they come up with that number, but he would just be like, we're going to run this hill until 11 people quit.

And we would run the hill until 11 people quit.

And so there'd be me and my buddy Gonzalez.

He's in CAG right now in Delta Force, but he's actually going to get out here in a few years.

But we told each other we weren't going to quit.

Like, I'll quit when you quit.

You quit when I quit.

And so we would be right next to each other the whole time, and we'd be telling people that really didn't have what it takes that were kind of sucking.

We'd be like, hey, man, I think you should quit.

You know, because we had to get 11, and we were trying to get him to stop us running.

So we would try to, like, mentally screw with people to get them to quit.

I mean, it's kind of fucked.

But at the same time, we don't want to run all day.

Like, we had to get 11 people.

So every day was just different.

And then there's this big range there called coal Range.

It's not like a shooting range.

It's just a range where you go and you just.

You do a lot of land navigation.

They kind of torture you where sometimes they'll have you break down those big army tents and then move them across the whole field and put them back together, hold your rucksacks above your head and recite the Ranger creed.

Sometimes they'd have a stand in formation at like 3 in the morning, and we would just stand there for hours and they would come by and be like, all right, guys, a lot of you just don't have what it takes, and that's fine.

It's okay.

There's a fire over here.

There's.

There's hot dogs.

We have food for you.

You come over, this can be over right now.

And they just get into our heads trying to get us to quit.

And people would go, really?

Oh, yeah.

People would go to the fire, and then the.

The instructors would be messing with them.

Like, hey, man, how's that hot dog?

Is it good?

Yeah, yeah.

No, you did your best, man, but it wasn't for you, you know, trying to just, like, mess with the.

With the students.

And then I remember this one time, this guy named Sergeant Israel, he came over to me, and we're not supposed to have snivel on, you know, like.

What's snivel?

Snivels, like the stuff you wear under your clothes to keep you warm.

Okay.

You know, I'm sure you had.

In the Marines, but it's.

We call it snivel, and you can't wear it when you're out.

They're trying to get you to freeze your ass off, you know, and so I was wearing some, and I wasn't supposed to.

And the.

Sergeant Israel was, like, staring at me in my eyes for, like, three minutes, just straight.

And I was like, I'm.

I'm screwed.

He's going to.

He's going to kick me out.

He's going to find my snivel.

But then he would just kind of, like, grab my collar and like, fix it and then walk away.

And I knew he had not.

I don't know why he didn't catch me, or they would just do psychological things like that.

Sure.

But it was definitely that.

One of the hardest things, if not the hardest thing I think I've done in my life was rip and getting through that.

Once they.

You graduate, you have your graduation ceremony, and they say, don berets, you don your beret.

And right when you don your beret, it's like this moment with all this stuff that happened over the four weeks and basic training and all that stuff culminated to now becoming a special operations soldier in the ranks with all these other rangers that have been going to war and doing great things in the g. WAT was like, a moment that I'll always remember.

Oh, for sure.

And it made me realize that from then on, I was like, I can do anything I put my mind to.

Like, legitimately, I doubted myself.

That's what Tony Robbins talks about.

I've been to a few of his events and he talks about limiting beliefs and I had that limiting belief that I can't do that.

Like those guys, those Black Hawk down guys, they're just, they're elite.

I'm not that level.

But then when I decided to believe in myself, which actually started from that drill sergeant believing in me, he was like, he saw something in me.

And then I decided to believe in myself from, from him.

And that led to becoming a Ranger and leading to a lot of other things in rangers, like going to snipers, you know, or, or starting this non profit and everything.

It's like I truly believe because of the experiences becoming a Ranger that I can do anything that I want to do.

For sure.

Was there a guy?

So anytime I've ever gone through courses or anything, there's always a dude that stands out.

Either got in trouble, motivated.

Was there a dude in your platoon that you remember his name and you'll be on your deathbed.

Dang.

Yeah.

I mean, I would say I forget his last name, but there was a guy that was always like a fun of the funny guy, you know, and he would make it, I forget his name, it'll come to me.

But he would always say these funny jokes.

He told this joke.

I don't know if I should say it because it's.

I mean, but he would just tell these funny jokes and make his like a little bit lighter on the day.

And just those little moments of laughter would really help a lot of us get through.

Yeah, but there wasn't also a guy named Rodman that would always.

He was, he's one of my better friends and one time he got us lost in the woods because they're like, go back to your rucksacks in the woods and come back.

Because we had a rucksack at the patrol base.

We just got blown out.

They were throwing already sims in all the time.

They just already, Sam, blow you out, get to the road, then go back and get your, your rocks.

So he's leading and I'm following him to the ruck.

And then he kind of just goes off.

And I'm following this red headlamp in the woods and we start going and I'm like, this is taking a long time.

And we get to this road and I'm like, hey, Rodman, where you got.

Where are we?

And he's like, I don't know.

And I was like, what?

He goes, were you guys following me this whole time?

And I was like, the whole.

Everybody was following him.

So we get up to the road, and we're lost.

And we start laughing because we realize we're screwed.

Like, these instructors are going to tear us up.

So we start popping our little cluster flare.

And they were about to start calling the.

We were lost for about an hour.

Okay.

So they were about to call the Blackhawks in to come find us.

But, yeah, then they got to us.

And they're like, who did it?

And then they're like, we won't get you in trouble.

And, like, you could trust us.

He's like, we're all getting smoked.

And he's not saying anything.

And after, like, two hours of getting smoked, he's like, okay, it was me.

And I was like, dang it, Rodman.

Like, you shouldn't have said anything.

But he just got retraining on land navigation, a little bit on how to use his compass.

But, yeah, there's a lot of guys that I think that I look up to.

There's a RIP instructor I went through.

His name's Mike Edwards.

We're actually working with him now.

He's gonna come up to a fundraiser event and do pistol training and stuff.

He was an rc, which is like the tier one version of Rangers.

Okay.

And just like, how he.

You didn't want to let him down.

Almost like he's one of those instructors you just wanted to do really well.

Yeah.

But, you know, he didn't really mess with you, like, to take pleasure in messing with you.

It was just that he wanted you to be a good Ranger.

So those are the best ones.

And you don't.

Might not see it at the time, but then as you.

You know, you go through those courses and you can see who is the more sadistic instructors versus the ones that you're like, man, this dude's a stud.

Like, he's been through a.

He's here to.

He wants to put the best product out.

And then you have the other version.

It's like, we want nobody to graduate except for maybe two of the top, you know, guys.

And those are.

Those are usually the best ones, or those are the ones that stick with you for life is when you.

Because you'll always remember how they treated you.

Might have with here and there, piss them off throughout days or something like that.

But they're like, more the dad.

Mentor in those programs.

Yeah, for sure.

I had a lot of good mentors, I feel like.

And not just in training, but in combat, like, with a lot of my mentors, you know, like, yeah, Sergeant Parker, Sergeant Clark, you know, Sergeant Bach.

A lot of the Guys were like my platoon sergeants.

I looked up to her squad leaders.

But, yeah, Ranger regiment's full of a lot of good leaders.

And some of them are a little sadistic and things like that.

Yeah.

And take pleasure in, you know, hazing you and stuff.

We had a Ranger battalion.

I mean, we can get into that was just hazing again back in 07.

So much hazing as a private, like, especially in mortars.

I think that's pretty common in mortars is like, across the board is kind of like the redheaded stepchild of the army are like.

But they're like the strongest.

They're like the strong Rangers.

Usually pretty squared away.

But they.

We used to haze people really bad.

Well, because I released the Marine Corps, the mortar teams always kind of doing their own thing.

They're not with the company or the platoon.

That's what.

They're always kind of tucked away because I was the mortar vehicle.

So I drove the mortarman on my first deployment.

So whenever, you know, in all the workups and everything, they had a couple of troops.

And, bro, I would not want to be a troop mortarman because, like I said, we'd be tucked on the backside of, like, a hill.

We were never with the company as they're doing their maneuvers and assaults, and these guys would just be digging holes all night.

Just.

Just.

It was just straight hazing, which I loved because I grew up in the hazing.

The last.

I feel the last generation of the good hazing in the Marine Corps.

So I supported it.

But, yeah, it was.

That's why I asked.

Because they're.

They're always kind of.

They're not with.

At least for the Marine Corps side of things.

They're always kind of tucked away.

So you never had eyeballs on you.

So you can do a lot more to your troops.

You can with them way more.

We were a little different in Rangers.

A lot of us were 60 millimeter handheld.

So we keep the.

We keep.

And we go out.

It was just another weapon system, essentially.

So it wasn't like we did.

But my first deployment, we did big guns, so that was 81 and 1 20s.

And we would go out with SEAL teams and ODA teams.

I would imagine there's some CIA guys that they look like CIA, but I was a private.

Like, I didn't ask questions.

I just did what I was told to do.

But, yeah, that deployment was.

Mortars is.

It's a very technical weapon system.

And it's not like you can just pick up a mortar and know how to launch 7,000 meters of 120.

You know, that's insane.

Yeah, I think the max orders or max distance is 7, 200 for 120.

Uncharged for 7, 200 meters.

And the charges are those little foam things.

You want to hear a crazy story about that?

Since I was mortar vehicle and we had all the mortarmen with it, they had all those extra shots or cheese charges, they're called charges, I guess.

And they'd thrown them in the trash and they had a whole trash bag, like a big black trash bag full of them.

And it was the day we were going to burn a bunch of trash.

So I walked over, I'm like, yo, you guys got anything you want to get rid of?

They're like, yeah.

And they just start giving us like MRA boxes and all this.

And they had.

They had all those extra charges in there.

And we threw that in the burn pit, bro.

It was like a rocket taken off in there.

I had no idea.

Like I've never seen them before.

Cuz obviously when they're doing their own thing, we're providing security or whatever.

That lit up bag.

That's a lot.

A giant trash bag, bro.

I just hucked it in there.

And it just.

That's our favorite part is mortars is lighting the cheese charges at the end of the range because they'll like spell stuff out like Ranger and then light it and burn bur down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those are cheese charges.

Those what?

Help propel the.

Each charge helps to give.

I know that.

So people listening.

I always.

I personally saw it.

You just drop a mortar in a tube and that's it.

I didn't know that.

They have these little horseshoe ring charges that you can just put on the bottom of it and then those ignite immediately.

So they just.

That's what's helping propel to max effective ranges.

Yeah.

Which seems kind of like really primitive or like old school, like with just cheese charges.

But they were like.

Our mortar teams in Ranger battalion are spot on.

Like these are some of the best mortar teams.

You know, some of the guys that I served with, like Kowalski was one of the.

He was actually my.

Did you ever meet Kowalski?

He's my business partner at Bull Hill.

I'm sure I did.

He's one of the better mortarmen that had some.

A lot of combat and they relied on 81s and 120s a lot.

On Team Merrell was a deployment where a lot of rangers went out and they would go and do a rod which is a remain over day site.

They'd take over a building, raise an American flag and say, come and get it.

And then they'd wait there for a couple days and they just engage targets that would come.

What?

And they used the 81s and 120s as their organic support.

And yeah, I mean, on that deployment, the mortars, I mean, dozens and dozens of.

I remember sitting back on.

I had gotten hurt and I had to sit back on deployment and watch the roll ups of all these missions.

And there would just be like 20 ek, 30 eka, 10 ek, like, and a lot of them are from mortars.

So we had, we had some good mortar teams and they.

And the 60 handhelds, you know, we didn't get to use them too much because why are they going to use 60 handhelds when they got C130 up in the sky or, or they got, you know, Apaches or little birds.

So, yeah, like a lot of times the shoot is 60.

They have to clear the airspace.

And it can be kind of hard to get your weapon system used in combat.

Like, when I'd carry it, I'd always be trying to use it.

Like, hey, I. I can blow up this wall.

Like, I can point right at the wall.

Okay, that was my next question.

I watched our grunts once trying to get into a compound and this kid with a mortar tube holds it and then they're like, no, no, no.

And he backs up, puts it against the wall across the street and shot the mortar straight into.

How they do that?

It's called.

Well, my friend Dennis, he was in mortars, he's called it direct.

Direct, like, because you just point.

I've never done it like in combat.

I've done it in training, shot at cars and stuff.

But I almost did it on one time they needed to blow a hole into a big wall and they were, they used the Goose, but it couldn't get through.

So they were going to see if I can use delay and get effects on.

But they decided not to last second.

Yeah, yeah, I've done.

There were some more missions that I did where.

Well, do you remember that helicopter that went down called extortion one seven that the seals were in?

There's like 30 of them.

Yep.

Well, we had gone on to go support that.

We're calling up our position that I actually had shot at.

But I spared this guy's life because they told me that I had.

It was up to me if I wanted to shoot him or not.

He was calling up our position for mortars, but he's in a window and I just Shot one right by him.

And I should have, looking back, probably shot him because he relocated to call up position or more positions or call up our positions to his people.

But that's the only time when I really set up my 60 conventional and we had done some, you know, train denial stuff where we had dropped some mortars.

But, yeah, like, mortars weren't really used as much because we had so much air assets.

Yeah.

As Rangers.

Like, we didn't go out without Spectre or without some.

Some sort of air assets, fast movers.

What does that feel like?

Leaving the base knowing you got a specter gunship overhead at just your beck and call, where you could just be like, hey.

I didn't feel very scared too often.

I really didn't.

Like when I had 50 of my friends, like Rangers that are all go getters, and then we had everything up in the sky looking after us.

I felt pretty safe, pretty invincible most times.

But then there was those times when you're like, oh, shit.

Like, I don't feel I'm pinned down right now and I don't have any support.

Yeah, that.

Yeah.

I mean, just thinking about that, the Dread Anarchy mission that I was on.

The what it's called Dread Anarchy.

Was the mission name.

Dread Anarchy.

Dread Anarchy.

Okay.

It was in a pretty intense mission.

I mean, I guess we can get into this one if you want.

Is this your still your first deployment?

No, this is my last deployment.

We'll get there.

Let's get there.

Yeah, okay.

We'll get there.

So your first.

First two deployments are as a Ranger mortarman.

So I guess after your first deployment you come back.

Did you go to Ranger Leadership School at that point?

Yeah, Ranger school I went to, after my first deployment, went to Ranger School.

Which Ranger school?

There's.

There's a lot of stories in Ranger school, but another really hard.

Like, Ranger school is no joke.

Especially in the winter or even in the summer.

You're dealing with Bug in the winter.

At least you don't have the bugs, but you're dealing with the cold.

I went through in the winter, and again, very intense.

Pre Ranger was just like basically RIP all over again.

It was pre Ranger they do to get Rangers ready for Ranger school so they don't fail.

So you guys have three courses in your going becoming a Ranger.

So you have rip, then you got pre Ranger School.

Then you have Ranger School.

Correct.

But now it's called rasp instead of rip.

But it's the same thing.

It's just a little longer.

Holy shit.

Yeah, the pipeline Is no joke to become a Ranger.

Like, to actually get to your tab to take a team is no joke.

Because there's a. I'm just saying this is a Marine, all right?

I'm an outsider because there is a difference.

And I've heard the beef between Rangers that just because you're a Ranger does.

There's a difference between a Ranger and a tabbed Ranger.

There's a difference between a scrolled Ranger, which is a 75th Ranger.

Okay.

And a Tab Ranger.

The Tab Rangers are the next level up over the 75th.

Yeah.

They're the leader.

They're.

Now that you're saying, okay, I'm ready to start getting promoted to become a leader in Ranger Regiment without getting that Tab, you're kind of stuck at the.

The E3, E4 level.

Like, you can't progress to be a team leader on the line, a fire team leader.

You can't go to snipers, you can't go.

So you have to excel through the.

Range or you'll get that.

You'll get kicked out.

No.

Yeah.

How often does that happen?

Well, some people, they.

Some people, they end up going to S Shops, you know, like the.

Okay.

S4.

And they stay in their unit because they're good people.

They just have trouble passing PT tests or whatever.

Okay.

But it's very rare.

Usually it's.

If you can't get through Ranger school, you're.

You're leaving.

At least that's how it was when I was in.

So it's safe to say for the GWA vets, anybody that was a scroll maybe didn't have a deployment.

But if you.

You have both your tab and scroll, that means you had to do a deployment for sure do that time before you.

Yeah.

I mean, there's probably a few that have a tab and a scroll without a deployment, but very, very few.

Yeah.

The Steiners of the world.

Hey, Ranger.

So, okay, so now you go through.

You go through this haze fest.

Are you doing Sear school or anything during that time?

I did sear school in 2011, so I went through Ranger school in 2009.

Okay.

And then I went to Sears school in 2011.

A lot of crazy stuff about Sear School, too.

That was a.

That school was more so.

And I can go back and talk about Ranger school, but serious.

Tell me.

Tell me about Sears.

I love talking Sear School because I. I don't feel civilians have any idea.

And there's different levels of, obviously, Sear school and see your training.

Let's dive into this because I love Hearing these stories, I never got to go.

I actually signed up for it as a, like a bonus to go because I, I just wanted to.

I reenlisted for it too.

Yeah.

And I.

They turned me down, but.

So I've always loved the stories of guys going to see your school and just hearing this.

The hell they had to go through.

Probably one of the coolest schools I went to.

Really.

Now I say cool just because you do learn a lot of survival stuff, which I was totally into from being a kid and stuff like that.

And then they teach you how to pick handcuffs.

Well, I gotta be careful about what I say about some of this stuff, but yeah, they teach you some, like how to get out of some restraints.

And like, they teach you about how to defeat cameras or at least avoid detection on cameras.

They basically put you into a training for a week.

You do training where they teach you about survival and then they teach you about resistance.

So survival, evade, resist, escape.

So they teach you survival.

They teach you how to evade.

Like how to evade a dog.

Like, you don't beat a dog.

You're not going to beat a dog.

She's got to beat its nose.

Beat its handler.

Yeah, you got to beat the handler.

I've never heard that.

So if you can get the handler to doubt the dog by going like going through bushes and going ways that they would be like, there's no way a human would want to walk this way.

Make them doubt the dog.

Go in circles and stuff like that and like do weird patterns.

That's how they say to.

No dog is.

And maybe there's other ways for sure.

I'm sure there are.

But that's what they taught us in serious school is you beat the handler.

But they, they teach you evasion and then resistance.

They first do like this eight hour shock where you're like captured.

They beat the crap out of you, which they, yes, they can hit you.

There's certain rules they don't tell you about, but you kind of pick them up on.

They can slap you as hard as they want.

And they're hard.

Did you get checked?

Oh, many times, yeah.

Yeah, my nose was bleeding one time and I was like.

He goes.

And they have accents because it's all acting when you're in the camp.

They're like, what are you bleeding?

And I was like, you just hit me.

And he's like, wham.

Hit me again.

And I'm like.

And he's like, I'll ask you again, why are you bleeding?

And I was like, you just hit me.

Again.

And then he boom.

And then at this point I'm like, okay, what am I saying that's wrong here?

And he's like, I'm gonna ask you one more time.

And I go, I fell.

He's like, that's right, you fell.

And I'm like, okay.

And so there was.

Yeah, I mean, these, these people are actors.

They, they're in the school, they, they have accents, they're jacked.

Like, one of the guys that came into my.

During this eight hour where you're in a resistance, they capture you, you're in a room, a guy comes in looking like the Rock and he's like, shuts the door.

And he gives me the Rock eyebrow and everything.

Then he picks me up, pins me against the wall, holds me by my neck against the wall with one arm.

He's huge.

And I was like 165 pounds.

And I was just like, tell me where the Americans are.

And I was like, I'll tell you everything you want to know.

Like, at first I told him stuff, but I didn't mean to because he's beating me up.

So they teach you how to first, okay, this is the wrong way.

This is the right.

Or this is how you shouldn't do it.

And they teach you, okay, this is what you should have done.

And then you go into your five day FTX where you're evading for like three days and you get captured and you get funneled into getting captured.

Everybody gets.

I heard that there's nobody, there's no way people.

I hear people say they escaped from Sears School.

Well, there is, in the camp there is some opportunities that you can escape, but these camps look like real camps and they put hoods over your heads and you don't know where you're going on these buses.

And you end up in these camps in the middle of Alabama somewhere.

This is near Fort Rucker.

Okay.

I went to Sears C at Fort Rucker.

And yeah, I just remember this really nice lady who was a warrant officer named Warrant Officer Burrows.

I think she's a warrant officer sergeant.

But yeah.

So you don't know where you're going or where you're at.

You're just in these woods in this camp.

But they have a lot of money put into these camps and then there's.

A lot of money put into you guys at this point.

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

With ranger school and indoctrination program, all.

The security clearances, weapons, everything.

Yeah, they put a lot of money into and everybody in the military, but for, for sure, in Special Operations, they put some money into us.

But, yeah, there was a opening in the fence, and we were digging, like, random holes for no reason.

And I was talking to my other ranger friend in there, and we're in, like, pajamas, or, like, not pajamas, but, like, kind of looks like gowns of some sort.

Like a prison.

Prison gown.

Yeah.

And so I was like, dude, do you see that there's a hole in that fence?

And he's like, I see it.

And I was like, you can't just escape.

Because, first of all, it's desertion.

You can't just leave your unit and save yourself.

You have.

There's rules to it.

You have to have water.

You have to know where you are on a map and where you're going.

You have to have the Social Security numbers of everybody that you're with.

So, like, no.

And I gotta be careful about talking too much about serious, because there's some stuff that we can't talk about.

But, yeah, there's rules to.

You can't just bounce out and leave everybody.

So, like, yeah, we were starting to get the socials for everybody and, like, do everything properly.

Then they take you into a.

Into another building where there's these closets, the side just big enough to kind of like go side by side with your shoulders.

And they would put music in there and a bucket to poop or pee in.

And the music wasn't music.

It was like.

Have you ever heard that?

It's like a World War I chant.

It's like, boots, boots, boots, and boots up and down again.

There's no discharge in the war.

And it gets.

It starts getting boots, boots, boots, and up and down again.

Boots, boots.

And just getting louder and screaming.

And you're just like.

You're going insane a little bit.

And there's even a girl that'll go, mommy, where's Fluffy?

Mommy, where's Fluffy?

Fluffy, Fluffy, Fluffy.

And they'll kind of tweak out.

And there would be an Adam Sandler, like, the nighttime is the right time.

And I remember a lot of these things they're putting in there.

And just to mess with us for I don't even know how many hours.

And then you go back out, start digging holes.

And one time there's a guy that.

Because this is all.

It seems like it's real.

And you can't just.

If you went up to a guy and said, I quit.

I don't want to do this, they just smack you around and be like, what are you talking about?

You're in a Prisoner at war camp.

Like, there's no quitting.

There's an academic situation you can pull where you like if you have to.

Like if you have a safety, something with safety.

But there was a guy that thought it was so real.

He went into the commandant, which is the, the office for the guy running the prison.

And there was two guards and there was a pistol on the, on the desk.

And the guy had walked in.

This is just what I heard later on.

I wasn't in the building.

But he looked at the guards and then grabbed the pistol and goes, you're dead.

You're dead.

Release the prisoners.

And just pointed at the commandant and they go, whoa.

Academics, like, stop.

That's when they actually had.

The only time they had to stop our whole class was because.

And he's like, he, he thought it was real.

And he was like needing to release the prisoners right now.

I'm going to kill you.

And he's like, that's a fake pistol, by the way.

And he's like, like, calm down.

You had to calm the soldier down.

And I mean, good for him.

I mean, I thought it was hilarious.

I was like, what?

Somebody's like, yeah, you tried to kill the commandant.

But yeah, it was a very realistic school.

It was.

I mean, it seemed like you couldn't like quit.

It wasn't like a tradoc school where there's rules.

It's like they can hit you and they can hit you in the stomach real hard, but usually it's like a backhand.

They do and they have a towel and they wrap it around your neck, they yank your neck in and they hit you and then they, you know, hit your stomach.

And I mean, yeah, it was pretty intense, but it's really cool, like, because you.

All the survival stuff and the evasion and the defeating restraints, I thought it was really cool.

I had a buddy and I like to ask dudes who went through Sears School.

He, he went through, he was a mini bird pilot in the SF units.

He did a bunch of crazy, but he said that the most degrading thing that he's ever had happen was at Sear school.

He said they went in the winter time and they had these female instructors that were there.

Yeah, I know, he's about to say,.

And they stripped him butt ass naked and they're just hosing them.

He said, he's like, I don't know how many hours we stood there.

He's like, it was just, we just, it was just indefinite.

We were standing and he's like, dude, this woman Sat there and just degraded us.

And he's like, yeah, a woman too.

Did you.

They do it in every class.

They stripped you guys naked?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I had my hood on when they were doing us the naked stuff and coming to my cell or whatever, but.

So I couldn't see her, but I could hear her voice.

But she was degrading other people, like, in their cells.

I remember this one time I had.

I had got out of my cell because they teach you.

I gotta be careful.

Sorry.

Some stuff we can't talk about.

But they teach you how to get out of stuff.

Yeah.

And I got out of my little cell and I open it up and there's just all these cells in this concrete area.

Like, everything's concrete.

And they just have these, like, wooden doors and.

What do you mean to sell?

Like, a dog cage.

Like a size of a.

Okay, so basically shoulder width, and then if you turn this way, a little more than shoulder width.

So just a place to stand.

You can't even sit down.

Oh, so you're standing?

Yeah.

They don't even let you sit down.

If they catch you sitting down, they're gonna beat you up.

So I had filled up my pee bucket and poop bucket and so they.

To call you pigs there.

They don't.

They dehumanize you.

They don't call you human names or anything.

And so I had stuck my hands out because they're like, stick your paws out.

And I stick my paws out and they're like.

They slide the thing open.

What do you want?

I'm like, oh, my poop bucket's full.

And it was overflowing all over the cell because it was dark in there.

You don't see anything.

It's pitch dark.

Are you even wiping your ass?

No, no, there's none of that.

No.

There's no toilet paper.

I have to ask.

I don't even think we had shirts on.

I mean, yeah, we had those gowns or whatever they were, but.

So you're just shitting.

He was like, you're a disgusting American.

And he's like, go clean your.

So I had to go dump it into some, like, trough thing and, like, clean it out.

But I got back in and I was.

I had saw something that I realized that I could get out.

And so I had gotten out after he walked by, and I realized I have no idea where I'm at.

I don't know if.

Even if I'm in Alabama, what am I gonna do when I run down this hallway?

And, like.

And I, like, I'M gonna, like, get caught and get beat up.

So I just shut the door and, like, locked it again because I was like, what am I supposed to do?

Like, because you can.

You can get out.

There's ways to get out.

And I think they try to tempt you a little bit with some things.

Like the hole in the fence.

Like, the hole in the fence.

It was like, what is this?

It was, like, covered with a palette.

And I was like, this is a trap, you know, like.

But it's.

It's trippy because it's like you're in a movie or something.

It's like you're an acting.

Like an acting land of some sort.

Is Adam.

Is it.

Do you forget that?

Obviously, the one dude did.

But, I mean, with being just consumed and engulfed in these actors and in these towns, and they're spending, obviously, millions of dollars, everything looks, feels, smells, tastes the part.

Do you.

Were you telling yourself the whole time it's just your school, or do you get.

Do you find yourself getting consumed into, like, the role and trying to actually really think about things and your next move and being strategic with stuff?

Does it get your mind working like that?

Yeah, but they teach you how to defeat the.

Some of the psychological things.

So one of the things they teach you is to build a house in your head.

And I mean, like, from the ground up, like, put the foundation in, put up the walls, put up the trusses, put up the drywall.

Then you put.

You're going to put your.

Your furniture in there.

You know, you're going to design it, you're going to go to this.

You're going to walk out the door, go to the store, in your car, go pick up a sofa, go put it in the living room.

And, like, they teach you how to, in your mind, build a home, and it keeps you busy in your mind.

So they teach you some, like, psychological techniques to defeat it, because that's what, you know, they had to do back in, like, World War II.

And anytime there's a powder, you know, they had to figure out ways how to beat the psychological trauma of it or shock of it.

But, I mean, I had a good grasp as a Ranger.

I was like, this is just training, like.

But it was definitely, like, one of the most realistic training I feel like I got.

I hear that, yeah, a lot of guys.

Not a lot, but I've heard some guys say that they had guys they went through and just snap, like, they just cannot handle it.

They certainly.

It's always fascinating to me how one thing that you're like, dude, this is hilarious.

We'll break another individual.

And something that, you know, he might think is hilarious is completely different.

So it's.

It's fascinating listening.

It always interests me listening to what makes men break.

Like, the surf, water, cold, hunger, fatigue, you know, and so it's just everybody's got their breaking point.

And it's always fascinating to me of seeing where guys are just like, yeah, this is it for me.

And sometimes you're just like, bro, this.

This is what we're quitting over.

Had a breaking point in ranger school.

You did.

What was your breaking point?

I went to go open MRE and I couldn't find the poppy seed pound cake that was in there.

And I knew there was poppy seed pound cake in this one.

Mre, I forget which one it was, but I had been planning on it all day.

I was gonna eat it right when I got to my foxhole, like, at night.

And I'm looking and I'm opening it up, and it's nowhere.

And I'm like, where's?

I'm like, did it fall out?

And I'm even blaming the guy in my fox.

Did you eat my poppy seed pocket?

And then I. I'm, like, freaking out and I go tell the ranger instructor.

And I was like, sorry, my MRE just didn't have a poppy seed pound cake.

Can I go ahead and get another one?

And he's like, I don't care.

Too freaking bad, like.

And I was like, but you don't understand.

It's supposed to have the poppy seed.

I'm like, I'm like, breaking down.

I'm crying.

I'm in my foxhole.

Just like, this is in Florida phase, so I'm almost done.

Like, But I was just, like, so broken down.

But yeah, there's a lot of times in mountain phase is no joke that breaks off a lot of people.

Because you're climbing those mountains in Georgia and Dahlonega and the Appalachian Trail.

That was the time when I was like.

Because it was so cold, we had to dig little fighting positions in snow.

They actually had us, like, force us to go sleep in some tents one night because it was so cold.

They had to get like, stoves and burn barrels and stuff.

But I told myself that I.

If I failed mountain phase, I was not going back through.

Like, it was that bad.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

You got one shot at this.

It was a one shot thing that was like, there's.

Because it's three weeks of just.

You're gonna spend five days out in the Mountains.

Hiking up and down those mountains, not eating, not sleeping and just breaking you off physically.

I mean when we get back to the barracks, everything smelled like ammonia.

And everyone in the middle of the night was cramping up real bad, like ah.

Screaming.

Because it's just, I mean think of like 75, 80 pound rucks on your back going up and down mountains for days and yeah.

You just, you're so done.

And the ammonia of smell from the ACUs.

The uniforms would just fill up the barracks once we get back.

And it was, Yeah, I mean that was one of the hardest phases.

Mountain phase I think is probably the hardest phase.

Then there's certain things do when you go through these courses and there's certain smells and there's like you just.

That's the smell.

It's the.

You know and it's.

There are certain things that will ingrain into you for the rest of your life.

And it's, it's funny when you say things like that because when you like ammonia spell, there's times where I could look back and be like, probably remember that how bad it smelled.

Those are, those are certain things that you'll never experience until going through something like that.

And you got 60 dudes that have just been through the worst course for the last week and then you're in a squad bay.

It is like everyone's just dropping gear and you're like oh bro, we gotta open this up.

Like it's just rank and yeah.

But it sticks with you forever because you're so tr.

The trauma bonding that you go through these courses and all the little things that come along just stick with you.

That's what I love about when you.

Said cheese charges with the mortars that comes up with the smell.

So like I was thinking about that smell when you mentioned it for sure.

Once, once we discovered those and they lit.

Oh man.

It was on you.

They're kind of fun.

They're like a little jet engine.

Yeah.

Fun to mess with for sure.

They just got a bunch of gunpowder in it or something like that.

Oh, and to answer your question, we, I think Ranger selection, we started with like 200, 250ish and we graduated with 58 I think.

So.

What?

Yeah, it was, it was.

Which I think there's classes that had less than that.

I think we added more of like a higher class.

But.

But yeah, I mean the PT test is going to knock off about half right off the bat.

How are you going to ranger school and can't even pass a PT test?

You think that would be like the company that, that sending that soldier to Ranger battalion would be like, okay, cool, you all got approved to go.

Here's the, here's the pre qual before we even send you to make sure you're not just going to be back a week later.

Well, I had problems passing the test.

Really.

Before I went, I was push ups.

Everything else was okay, but they're really strict, I'm sure the salaries of the Marines too, but they're really strict on your form push ups.

And when I do a push up, it doesn't seem like I lock out my arms just don't tend to like lock out.

Like, like they, they don't look locked out, but they are.

So like I would have to do 85, 90 push ups to get to where I'd get 64 because they would not count a bunch of them.

So when I was getting ready for pre Ranger, but the Ranger schools pre course, you have to take a Ranger test for pre Ranger to take a test for Ranger school.

There's a lot of tests.

And I would always be failing push ups.

Me and my friend Jake, actually, he's here right now.

We'd be the ones that'd be like, they failed push ups again.

So we started doing push ups all the time.

Like getting it to where.

Well, I guess we got to do like 90 push ups to pass the test because they're not going to count 30 of them.

So that's what my strategy was, just to do as many as I could and then know that they're not going to count some of them.

And.

But once you get to Ranger School, that PT test isn't hard.

They want you at 90% for when you leave Ranger Battalion, 80 when you leave Ranger, the pre Ranger, and then at like 60 for Ranger school.

So I mean, that's not 60 PT test isn't.

That's like, it's like 45 push ups or something.

It wasn't much.

Okay.

So once you get to Ranger school, the whole point is to make it really hard to get there.

So when you get there, because it takes.

It costs a lot of money to send somebody to Ranger school.

So they don't want you to fail and come, come back.

And if you fail and come back as a Ranger, depending on how you failed, you're gone.

Yeah, like, it was that when I was going through pre Ranger, I passed, but I had Achilles tendonitis.

When I was done, I couldn't start Ranger school because I was.

The Achilles tendonitis was so bad, it felt like Somebody was cutting my Achilles with a knife every time I'd step.

So they let me.

They were gonna send me back and have me come back.

And I was like, please, God, do not send me back back.

I'll never come back here.

Is because it's really hard once you leave.

If you leave Ranger school and you go back to your battalion, your unit, get back, unless there's, like, a really good reason, like, you might not ever come back.

So I was.

I begged him, and he said, okay, you stay here.

You're just gonna do land nav for three weeks straight with the holdovers.

And so for three weeks, I got really good at land.

Now I just do land out every day, and then I gotta start Ranger school after that.

But so I had a little bit of a hold before I started Ranger school.

Yeah, it's really.

You don't want to.

Once you're down there, you definitely don't want to come back until you get your time.

We kind of blew over it.

But when you were in jump school, did you have any close calls or any hard landings?

Um, well, I have a jump injury.

Not from jump school, but in jump school, not really.

You only do five jumps in?

Yeah, jump school is like five jumps.

You do the towers and you do five jumps.

Really?

Yeah.

It's a lot of work up to the jumps.

Okay.

It's only three weeks.

It's really.

Did you do any jumps in the.

In the army afterward?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

In a Ranger.

Yeah.

You say that like that was.

Well, yeah, we're Rangers.

Rangers, yeah.

We.

I probably.

I actually had.

Didn't have that many because I. I had a knee injury from a bull riding incident.

Actually.

I got kind of yelled at for that bull riding right before deployment.

I had to skip the deployment because I had a knee injury.

But.

Yeah, but how'd that go over with your battle?

They were a little bit.

They were like.

What were you doing?

Riding bull?

It was a military bull riding day.

I don't know, like military appreciation day.

Yeah, but.

So I didn't jump for like, two years, but I had, like, 50 jumps.

Okay.

Yeah, but there's plenty of people.

Is like 100.

But yeah, it's.

We jump a couple times a month maybe, but not as much as 82nd.

Like, 82nd jumps all the time.

But yeah, our.

Our big thing is airfield seizure.

So that's where we go in and we seize airfields.

Like, objective ran out, I think it was called for Afghanistan.

We seized airfield.

I forget exactly what city that was in, but maybe that's Kanahar Bagram.

It's all the same.

Yeah, all the same.

But we, that's our big baby is airfield seizure.

That's what, every training cycle we do it, we jump into an airport or some sort of airfield and we seize it, take control over it.

And you know, that's our, our big baby.

It's like what they did in like Panama.

No,.

But yeah, I don't.

So that's the main mission of Army Rangers is airport or airstrip seizure.

Airfield seizures.

One of our biggest things that we do but direct action raids over the G Bot Rangers have had more direct action missions than any other unit.

Any other unit, including SEALs, Delta Force.

We have the most direct action raids.

And I'm pretty sure you can look this up, but yeah, we would go out every night.

We do direct action raids.

What's a direct action raid?

Explain that for everybody listening.

So, I mean, I'll just break it down.

It's basically like, let's say you get a.

You have a target, a bad guy that you've been targeting with human, like human intelligence or some sort of, some sort of intelligence.

They, we wait till they go to bed and we track certain things they have.

I gotta be careful what I say, but they track, track them and then they get a bed down location and then they launch us to go pick them up.

Sometimes they just say, hey, okay, I give up.

And they come out peacefully.

I'd say most times that's how it is.

Usually just coming, surrounding a compound and having the interpreter say you're surrounded by Americans come out.

And usually that's it.

They come out, send the women and children, men come and then we take our guys and we go fly out.

But a lot of times they'll run and sometimes they'll run and they'll go to fighting positions.

Sometimes they'll fight from in place.

Sometimes other locations around the area come as reinforcements.

So it's like those are more of the direct action raids, going after specific high value targets.

Got it.

But the, the call out is like, that's the big thing that was developed during the G. W.A.T.

I'm sure like Delta Force did it before the G. WAT and everything.

But we really fine tuned the call out and being able to core on off an area and take, take high value targets off the battlefield.

But a lot of times it was just pick them up and put a bag over their head, hand them off to the CIA in a white van when we get back and they interrogate them.

We go eat chow and play video games and wait for the next one, it was usually, like, just a chill walk through Afghanistan.

It was nighttime.

Right.

Like, it was really.

A lot of it was kind of peaceful, like, walking, you know, under the stars.

And night vision under the stars is really cool because you just see everything, you know?

And so, like.

But then there's the.

The gunfights that happen, and then you're like, holy crap.

That really just happened and kind of shocks your system a little bit or ID blows up somebody in front of you, and.

But a lot of it was, you know, 90% of it was just picking up guys off the battlefield and taking them back to the base.

That's got to be fun.

Yeah, it was fun.

Yeah.

I mean, I think looking back and doing it, I don't.

Didn't realize how much of an impact, like, what I was really doing.

I just kind of looked at it like I was just doing my job and.

But I really do think, you know, highly of some of the things that we did back then, because it's just crazy.

I couldn't do it now, I feel like.

But back then, I was 22 years old and a sniper rifle, and I'm like, yeah, it's a.

It's a young man's game, for sure.

Yeah, it's a young man's game.

Yeah.

The days are running around with a 240, and.

Oh, no, those are.

Those are.

Those are long.

Those are past our time.

Yeah.

And that's okay.

And now it's the time for, like, healing and for sure, peace and.

And I like to, you know, be a peaceful, kind of peaceful warrior now.

A warrior in the garden.

Warrior in the garden.

That's where I'm at.

That's the chapter of my life that I'm in right now.

So.

So you go through Seer.

You go.

You got your first deployment out of the way.

Well, you haven't done through Syria, technically in the timeline, but.

So you deploy again as a mortarman?

Yes, that was with Alpha Company in Kandahar.

Okay.

Afghanistan.

So that was.

Yeah, that was kind of a more chill deployment.

Not a lot happened on that.

Yeah, I actually didn't engage with my rifle and kill an enemy combatant until my third deployment.

So it took.

And that's.

It was kind of like, you know, a lot of people when I came back, my first deployment, like, people from high school were like, was it.

You killed somebody?

Right?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I killed somebody.

I didn't.

But I was just like.

I didn't want them to think I didn't do anything.

So I was like, yeah.

And then it was like the second deployment was more of doing in Kandahar, going in with strikers and going, doing the same thing, call outs, but in the city.

Okay.

And as a mortarman, I was assigned to be the troop commander of a striker.

Basically sticking out the hatch, making sure everyone's driving and the gunners directing the right way.

Which was cool.

I mean, you go into the city and stuff.

But it was like not a lot of, you know, I wasn't going and kicking indoors.

Yep.

Which.

That just wasn't my thing, though.

My whole time I was sniper and a mortar, I was on blocking positions and roofs.

Like, yeah, I didn't do a lot of door kicking.

Like a lot of people assume just because I was a ranger, you know, I kicked in a lot of doors and it's like, no, actually I Very rarely overseas that ever kick in the door.

Well, people also think too, like with special forces units, like, everybody's just in the.

But there's so many different positions.

And then once you're trained for that, it's like, like you being a sniper, like, you know, immediately, okay, we're going to take the roof on this building.

These guys are going to go and insert here.

They need overwatch here.

And then you guys are so every.

The mortar or the motor, motor t, guys, the comm, the medic.

I mean, everybody's got their position.

So it's not like just the whole team's going in and blazing.

I mean, there's.

There's so many moving parts to especially small units where everybody just thinks everybody's in the same.

But you might be providing overwatch 500 yards, you know, in the palm groves on the other side of the river.

Or something, which most times it was like that I was on a mountainside overwatching an area.

They'd be getting into the shit.

And I'm just kind of overwatching or sometimes it's me getting into the.

Into the shit, engaging.

And nobody else is in the area because I'm the only one that can see the targets because they're on the outskirts of the city or whatever.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So third deployment happens.

Now, did you.

You became a sniper for your third deployment, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so let's talk sniper school.

I love hearing stories because they're so.

It's so fascinating, especially the crawl or the sneak portion.

Did you guys.

Do you guys do that in sniper school?

And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it was my fourth deployment.

I went to sniper.

I went on the deployment, I went over to snipers on my third.

Okay.

Halfway through, they started training me and taking me over to teach them, so already kind of transitioning from orders to them.

But I didn't do, like, my first official deploy as a sniper until the fourth and fifth one.

Okay, but the third deployment, that's the one where the extortion one seven up in Logar Province, when all the seals got got, you know, killed and our sister platoon had to go in and pick up all the bodies and all the equipment.

It was.

Yes.

There was 30 seals that died in that.

33, I think.

33.

Yeah.

And then they grew.

Yep.

Yeah, that's.

And we.

We know some of those because at Bull Hill, where Steve's at, you know where that.

Steve Schaefer was a guy that had a saloon up there.

Did you went to the saloon?

Yeah.

Did you hear he passed away?

Yeah.

It's freaking sad, man.

He was like a mentor to me, for sure.

Like a dad.

He was a stud.

What he.

What he passed from?

Well, he had Agent Orange and like, that kind of stuff from Vietnam.

But he was also older, like 78, like something.

70 Something.

But yeah, some of those seals that were killed in that helicopter crash had come out to Bull Hill, and so, like.

But that's when we went over to do that.

That big mission where we took the whole company, Rangers in, and.

And raise the American flags and do all that stuff.

So you guys walk me through that.

That's insane to me, because I know how Marines, they'll go pick fights and, you know, roll through a town in the middle of the night to get the.

The Abrams wreck vehicle, the 88, I think the.

The recovery vehicle, because it's the loudest damn vehicle on the planet.

And just drive through a town at three in the morning and back in the houses and stuff.

So you guys are going into a city or a town, taking over a house, raising an American flag and just saying, come and get it.

Yeah, more of like a compound.

There's no, like, roof or nothing.

Yeah, yeah, there's roofs, but there's, like, compound.

And they have these little buildings in there.

But, yeah, that was the big thing from Team Merrill.

Our.

Our name was Team Darby.

So there's Team Maryland, Team Darby were two surge units or deployments where BCO surged early to do Team Darby and then a code.

The deployment before did Team Merrill.

And, yeah, those deployments were supposed to be really heavy with a lot of action, and.

And they were.

But we.

Yeah, to get the enemy to come out they would just raise American flags and say, come and get it.

And then we'd hear them on the ICOM chatter saying, hey, Americans are at this building.

We're going.

So we knew that when they were coming, because we can pick up on the radios.

And, like, even when that guy that I talked about that I was.

I shot around next to you.

He was like.

Somebody was like, hey, there's a guy in this building.

And they had the building with the GRG number on it.

And I was, like, right in front of me.

And so I'm like, at a porthole, looking with my LCAN and was like, oh, my gosh, there's the guy right there with a radio, like, peeking in through the window, staring right at me.

It looks like he was looking at me.

It was 150 meters.

I had ranged him, so easy shot with an M4 with an El can.

And I was like.

I told my squad leader, hey, I see the guy.

And he's like, called it up.

Hey, let's seize him from his porthole.

What should we do?

And comes across, basically says, it's up to you.

Let's like, what do you want to do?

Do you want to kill him?

You didn't feel right taking the shot?

No.

Okay.

Why.

Why do you think that was at that time, if you had confirmation?

Well, because.

Just because he had a cell phone in his hand and was looking out his window, you know, like, they're telling me that he's calling up our position for mortars and stuff like that.

I just.

I don't know.

I just felt like I just put around by him, and I put one right through the window and through his head, and he got out of there fast, and then came on the radio saying, they're shooting at me.

I'm relocating to call up more.

More positions.

So it was bad to call because he just left and did his job and tried to kill more Americans.

But, I don't know, was there an incident prior to that that maybe happened where it made you hesitate, or was that the first time that you had time to process and then to.

To not take that shot?

Yeah, I mean, I got my first kill on that deployment, and that was earlier, that deployment, where this is another moment where I realized to be an effective leader and get where you can kill enemy combatants, which.

It was my thing.

I wanted to.

I wanted to kill enemy combatants.

And ever since I was a kid, I wanted to kill the enemy.

Wasn't like a sadistic thing.

I just.

I felt like that was what I needed to do as a ranger, like, for sure.

Looking back on it now, it means nothing.

You know, everybody's in a position and has to maintain a position.

Sometimes bad guys pop up, sometimes they don't.

And so it's just a lot of it's luck.

But I had.

There's score interdiction is a big thing we do.

Where squirters is where people come from.

The target building.

Squirters.

Yeah, there's movers.

It's just people moving around.

Right, Movers.

But a squirter comes from the target building.

That means it's probably a bad guy.

Okay, so there's a squirter coming from the target building, running through these villages.

And we had chased him, done squirter interdiction.

And they were like.

And they didn't tell me to go with them, but I was like, I'm going.

So I dropped my mortar tube at a locking position and said, hey, watch my tube.

And I just went off with my private and was like, follow me.

And I went off with the squirting addiction team and chasing him.

And I got to the where the bad guy was, and there's a sparkle, because that drones for us, they'll put down sparkles of infrared to show, hey, there's a guy here.

And it was on this big, huge boulder, and he's on the other side of the boulder.

And I was, like, sitting there waiting for the rest of the.

The rangers to show up.

And I was like, well, screw this.

I'm just gonna flank him and see what's on the other side of that rock, see if I can see him get a shot.

So I grabbed my private and I flank him, and I look on the other side, and there he is right there with his rifle tucked up underneath a rock.

And I was like, hey, I got this guy right by this rock.

And I'm all excited.

And they're like, well, shine your laser on him and let him know that you see him.

Which I didn't think it was gonna work, but I was like, okay.

So I shine my red laser right in front of him.

He freaks out, starts running from the rock.

I started engaging the machine.

Machine guns started engaging.

The saw started engaging.

And so it was me and probably two other people shooting at him.

And then he gets.

He starts going down, and I go up to the body and I shoot him in the head, Which I missed, actually, the first round because I was aiming through my optic.

And there's things this hide over bore, like, with the 2 1/2 inches difference or whatever.

I shot right underneath his chin instead of in his mouth.

And.

But I shot him.

And then I had this huge adrenaline, like, from that whole experience and was like, holy shit, that just happened.

And like, my private is like, holy crap, Sergeant.

Like, that really just happened.

I'm like, yeah.

And we got back and I remember shaking and, like smoking my cigarette.

And I wasn't a smoker by any means, but I just wanted to calm my nerves.

And I was just like.

And my other private who didn't go on the mission said, like, what does that feel like, Sergeant?

And I was like, that was one of the best feelings I ever had.

Like, it was just an amazing feeling.

Like, that I had done my job and I did it where I had had to plan it out, like, strategically maneuver on the enemy.

And that's when I started getting more hooked.

And that's why I wanted to go to snipers.

So I went to snipers that deployment and started talking with them and then officially got transitioned over after that deployment.

Damn.

You stood over this dude and shot him.

Did you do a follow up shot?

Yeah, shot him in the throat.

Did you put it right on his forehead or what?

Yeah, I was trying to shoot him in the head.

I missed a little low because I didn't count for my height over Boris, and I just put one right in his cheek.

But, yeah, I mean, that was the first time that I'd taken the life of my rifle or any life, I think maybe with a mortar one time.

But yeah, I mean, that really defined the next few years of my service because I was like, where do I go to do more of that?

And snipers is where all the kills in the gwat.

Not all of them.

Of course not.

But there's a lot of people that aren't here with us on the enemy side because of snipers, for sure.

Ranger snipers.

And I've seen Ranger snipers take shots that were really impressive.

Moving targets, going full speed, 14 miles an hour at 200 meters, shooting some guy in the head.

And I was like, how did you do that?

Easy, man.

Sniper stuff.

And he had that swag, you know.

And I was like, that's where I want to go.

Go.

I'll go to cybers.

Oh.

And that's when I started going over there and then.

So what, were you attached to them?

Like, almost providing security for them or were they training you on this deployment?

They were training me.

So I basically went over their hooch and I said it was a guy named Weeks who's in Delta Force now, and A guy named Wilson who's in Delta Force too.

And I was like, guys, I want to come be a sniper.

And I was really shy, like, kind of.

But they took me in, like, come on in.

Like, well, and they started.

They had their rifles, they started giving me classes.

They let me go out one time on a mission with them.

They let me.

We got over.

Our base was getting overrun one time, and so they let me get on the roof with them with their M110, which is like the sniper rifle.

And like, they just taught me a bunch before I went over there after the deployment, officially, because you have to go through a selection.

There's like a sniper selection.

It's like a three day selection.

Your base was getting overrun.

It wasn't like fully getting over them, but it's getting attacked.

Yeah.

Like the Chechnyans or I think they were like, like falling asleep at the guard tower always.

So, like, it wasn't like overrun, but, you know, we were trying to get our.

Some shots off and get on top of some buildings, see if we can see anything.

Yeah.

But I've never been in a situation where I feel like I was overrun.

I was pinned down.

But I'll go to my last deployment, but.

Yeah, I'll talk, I'll talk to you about that.

Okay.

So you get your first official kill on your third deployment.

That gets you hooked.

You want to go to sniper school now.

So you, you start training with those good dudes, get back.

And then.

So this is the point.

After everything comes together and you're.

Now you're off to sniper school.

Now I'm off to sniper school.

And actually I might have done sniper school after my fourth deployment.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

Because I think I went to sniper school with a little bit of experience as a sniper.

I did definitely.

But I think that I did my fourth deployment because it's.

I had my four as a sniper.

I had multiple engagements.

So, like, I kind of had that swag when I went to sniper school because I already had like, sniper, so.

Oh, so they just kind of took you in and did you get like marked as like a designated marksman or whatever for your platoon or do you.

Were you actually.

I was in snipers.

So, like, you go to snipers and then you get attached to a platoon with two of you.

So snipers is like its own hhc, like organic, like headquarters.

Okay.

And then you get assigned two snipers to a platoon, and then you're.

There are snipers, essentially.

Got it.

So you're not organic to the.

To the platoon by any means.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're an attachment.

Your attachment.

Exactly.

And that's that you did that on your third deployment.

That's when I transitioned was third and then fourth deployment was when I became my.

Was actually like my first official.

Oh no.

Okay, okay.

I'm tracking now.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I don't think I went to sniper school until after my.

My fourth deployment, but sniper school, yeah, like that was.

I didn't think it was too hard because I'd already been shooting a lot and like, because we go to accuracy first, which is a place in Texas where it's like amazing wind course where you just like 36 mile an hour winds and you're learning how to shoot these little 12 inch steel plates.

And Todd Hodnett's one of.

He created the horse reticles and all that stuff in the scope.

So I already been to his class.

I had been to sniper school or maybe not sniper school, but other courses like a designated marksmanship course.

So by the time I got to deployment I was pretty ready to go.

And I was just eager to.

I mean I was just eager to hunt down bad guys.

Like.

And it was really traumatic because my first mission as a sniper.

Well, this.

Okay.

So my first mission, I just remembered I accidentally.

Well, my gun didn't work because I was coming off of the helicopter and we.

I assuming when I went to rack my bolt, something came like a rock came into the star chamber and prevented it from going into battery.

So I didn't know this at the time, but I climbed this roof and my sniper partner climbs and we're on this roof and there's blocking positions around this target area.

But I see two people with AKs coming out of this building that are dressed like women.

Like, and this is a night, so it's kind of hard to see, but they have like their, their hoods on and they have their face coverings, but they have AKs and they're maneuvering.

But it looks like on the blocking position and the blocking position doesn't know.

So I am the first one to see these bad guys maneuvering.

So I go to shoot one and click.

And I used to have dreams as a kid growing up that my guns wouldn't work.

I know that's a very common one, but like I used to have it all the time that literally click like or like a bang would come out then and it just wouldn't work.

I still have them, but I went click, sh, sh click.

And I pulled out my pistol and I was like Dutton on you or on my lase?

Two enemy combatants.

So I lased it for him.

They're only about 100 meters away.

He killed both of them.

I get off the roof, and I start white lighting my rifle.

And there's a pebble in my star chamber.

So the.

The firing pin wasn't hitting the primer.

So I was like.

And it was just, like, I felt like I was cursed.

I literally felt like I was cursed because of these dreams I had as a kid and my first mission as a sniper, this happens.

And my.

My sniper team leader was like, I'm just really disappointed in you, Litz.

Like, I felt so bad.

I was like, like, sorry, man.

Like, I swear I checked.

I.

Like, I cleaned my gun because he thought I didn't clean my gun or something.

No, I kept it clean.

It's just.

I think the only thing I could think of is the.

The rotor wash kicked in some rocks or something.

But.

So I was really, after that, really anal about making sure that my.

Everything was working right.

I did function checks, you know, always white lighting my star chamber.

But, yeah, that was.

And then from there, I had another engagement about a week later.

This one was kind of hard because this guy didn't have a weapon, and he was a bad guy, but he didn't have a weapon.

I thought he did.

And he was walking through this farm field.

He's.

Another squirter came from the target building, leaving.

He had this big piece of.

I don't know, in his hand, but it looked like it might have been an RPG almost.

Okay.

But I was like, okay.

And so I'm trying to find him.

He's going through these bushes, and then he gets into this sheep herd, and he's hiding in the sheep.

And I'm like, this guy, what's he doing?

Like, coming from the target building, hiding in some sheep with this big contraption.

And so the little birds.

I call it up, and I'm like, hey, there's a guy coming from the target building.

He's hiding in the sheep.

So the little birds come over and drop flashbangs on the sheep and try to get them to disperse.

So they do that.

And then all this rotor wash, and I'm only like 70.

70 Meters maybe.

Close.

Like, close.

Yeah.

Like, don't even need my scope, really.

And I'm like.

And it's just really loud.

The helicopters come in, all this dust.

Sheep are going everywhere.

And all of a sudden, out of the dust, this guy's running straight at me, just.

And he's got this thing in his hands.

And like a split second, there's just a lot of dust.

It's really hard to see.

I'm like, that's enough.

Came from the target building.

He's being nefarious.

He's hiding in sheep.

And I shoot him in the stomach.

But because there was rangers on the other side, and I didn't want to put one over miss, or have it go through his chest and hit a Ranger, so I put one in his stomach.

And then when they got through and they cleared, they were like.

It was a walking stick that he had.

And he was the village elder, but he wasn't a good village elder.

He had a hit.

Because the freaking family was right there.

And I could hear them in the middle of the night screaming and crying.

I was like.

And I'm freaking out.

I'm, like, telling.

I'm telling the guys next to me, like, is.

That was a good shot, right?

The Afghans, I was like, did you see.

He was going.

And they're like, good shot.

Moving from the target building.

He was nefarious.

Like, they're like, it's good.

He run, he bad.

He run, he bad.

And I was like, I hope he's.

You're freaking thinking the same thing as the people at Leavenworth because I'm about to go to jail, dude.

But, no, it turned out they have this way of seeing what activity they've been involved in the past.

I don't know if it's like, with their.

They do something with their testicles where they, like.

Or maybe it's DNA.

I forget what they do, but they figure out they can figure out who they are and what it's called.

The Seek, I think, system that they use.

I didn't mess with it too much, but it turned out he had a bunch of activity.

He was involved in killing some.

Some.

Some Marines the year before.

So, like, bad guy, but also his whole family was crying and, like, he was like, the village.

I don't want to say he was the elder, but an elder guy in.

The village, that's a close shot.

So as a sniper has a sniper in Afghanistan, what was your average length of engagement or distance of engagement?

Yeah, between 100 and 500.

So my average would have been like 200 short distances.

Damn.

That is.

Yeah.

My farthest shot was on the last deployment was 500 meters.

And that was just kind of a guess from me looking at Google Earth later on.

Yeah.

But yeah, a lot of this stuff, our kind of being a sniper is more offensive.

It's Like I'm not sitting on a mountainside waiting from a mile away with just a couple of us.

It's like to protect the assault force.

Yep.

And it's to give them information saying, hey, we got people maneuvering from this location or we got people leaving from the buildings over here.

Most of my job was observation and routes.

Biggest thing I did was routes for the assault force.

So I would get a target grid and then I would get with the helicopters and say, okay, where should it be land?

And I'd figure out some acoustic modeling to figure out.

We don't want them to hear us.

So we usually go 3k or farther away and like a terrain feature like a mountain.

And then we land.

And then I would create checkpoints to get to the target building or the release points.

And then I would go to my overwatch position, which a lot of times on roofs would be stopped.

Getting away from getting on roofs a lot because people are getting shot on roofs.

So but you got to be able to see too.

So like a lot of times I'd be on the outskirts of the city just standing up on shooting sticks just like this.

Just watching, just watching the, the buildings or watching the black side of the black side of the buildings.

So yeah, a lot of it was like offensive.

It wasn't a lot of thousand meter shots or anything like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, then I, I asked because obviously the movies and the whole Chris Kyle thing, taking that shot on the roof.

In the storm, that's I don't want to say too much about, I mean, I have my opinions on it.

I don't like talking bad about the dead, but it, it's very unrealistic what Hollywood put into place with that because first of all, you're a mile away.

That head size of 9 inch target, just 1 mile an hour will move you outside of that.

And he had a windstorm coming in.

So how did you calculate the wind to an accuracy of hit percentage that could hit a 9 inch target?

And then also you were shooting off a very unsupported position.

Not in the prone off of a barrel.

That's like, okay, I don't think that really.

I think that's Hollywood that did that.

But also when you, I would just call it up because you're most likely.

It's all about hit percentage.

Like when you put it the stuff we did at Bull Hill, those are hit percentages, like the stuff on the, the target.

Like you have a certain hit percentage on a certain size target in certain conditions and that condition your hit Percentage would be like 0.1%.

So like, why would you want to take that shot knowing that the hit percentage is below a 50% chance?

I wouldn't have done it.

I would have called it up and said, hey, we have this enemy combatant.

And I don't understand how he knew it was the Iraqi sniper from a mile away.

My, my biggest.

Obviously that's from a sniper's point of view.

You know, everything that you touched on as a Marine or not, just as a someone that served their country.

Okay, so I'm going to ask you this way because this, I want to hear it before I say my, my problem.

On that whole entire Chris Kyle shooting shot, right.

As a sniper in the Chris Kyle scenario, mile shot on a roof, storm rolling in and you have your whole team below you.

Would you ever take that shot jeopardizing a whole entire team?

Because your whole.

The whole thing was you can now compromise everybody in that position.

Why wouldn't you call it up, let them go get him, say, hey, he's at the building.

They have building numbers.

They have TRGs, like for people, for people listening.

GRG is pretty much imagine a Google map of your neighborhood and each building has a specific Alpha one, Alpha two, Alpha three.

And then it'll start Bravo.

That's how ours were.

Yeah, they're like circular.

So then you could open a map and you could talk to a pilot and be like, hey, hit B43 and they have the same map.

So like you're saying all they had to do is be like, hey, this guy's at F33.

Now to be fair, maybe a mile is outside of the Mac.

Yeah, absolutely.

But still, to give away your position for one guy that wasn't a threat, a mile away isn't a threat.

Now if, if he's, if you had to and you're just taking pop shots and taking your guys out, I get it.

But the way that Hollywood painted that wasn't really realistic.

And I'm sure that's not even how Chris Kyle would say that it went down.

Yeah.

So.

But he did.

I remember watching him when I was, you know, a kid, like see him on Fox News and him talking about how he had 160 something confirmed kills and just being like.

And all his stuff was close range.

He'd just stay on the glass a lot.

And a lot of it was close range stuff.

Not a lot of mile shots.

That's a lot.

A big reason why I asked, because I think Hollywood and just the normal person thinks that you're you know, sitting a mile away, ghillie suited out and just over watching and picking dudes off as they're running.

But in reality, I mean, mean as a, as an avid outdoorsman, right.

I'm not a sniper.

I've never done any long range anything in any military.

But even just as like a hunting guide of how many dudes will up a 200 yard shot with a rifle, let alone a human in a war zone with adrenaline, with all the elements and everything that come in the picture.

Those shots, when you watch those movies, you're like oh God, here, you know, I just, I know the reality of, of shooting.

Obviously you guys have been trained by the best, you are the best.

And any snipers in any branches, you know, that's your job.

But there's so many elements that come into play for that shot.

That's why you're, you're talking about your percentage chart.

Well applied ballistics makes a program that I bought that you can put in all your different variables.

You can put in 1600amile away, you can put in the wind speed, you can even put the wind speed deviation and being like it's, it's plus or minus 1 mile an hour or you can say it's changing plus or minus four miles an hour, you can put in the velocity.

So what's the differences between VELOCITIES?

Is it 10ft per second?

Standard deviation going from 2600 to 2610 to 2590.

So you can put those in, you can put in the temperature of the day, you can put in all the different environmental factors and then it'll give you a hit percentage on the size target that you want to hit.

Size of a head's about 9 inches.

You can put it in there.

I challenge somebody to do that and see what the hit percentage in that program would be on a 9 inch target at a mile and 20 mile an hour winds, you know like it's going to be very low.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's not about what the individual sniper can necessarily do.

It's about what your equipment can do, what your rounds are capable of doing.

A lot of these rounds that they give us in snipers have a 75ft per second extreme spread of DV or velocity which if you change from going this 2600 to 2675, well if you're doing a 2675, that's getting there faster.

Less gravity affected on your bullet.

So it's going to have different elevations.

And if your wind is changing off four miles an hour, between you're gonna have different left and right.

That's so crazy to me to think that the army is providing snipers with such ammo that you're.

You have that much of a window.

That was terrible.

Yeah.

Like, here we are sending billions of dollars to everybody that needs it in the world, but we can't get.

A.

They make some, like, I mean, Hornady round.

I mean, but obviously, how many years ago is it.

Ammo's come a long way.

And I understand for people listening, like,.

Sierra Match King is like the 175 Grand Sierra matchings.

The 110LR, I think they're called, or something like that.

M110LR or something like that.

They're like, they're not the gold standard, but they'll get the job done.

Yeah.

Especially with the stuff we were doing overseas, like, for sure.

But you're really trying to do this stuff like what we were doing at Bull Hill.

Like, you want to get the Hornady stuff to the 10ft per second standard deviations or even down.

If you start hand loading, you get that down to 3ft per second, your velocity stays exactly the same, and your elevation ain't going to change much as long as you do everything right.

That's why it's so impressive when I hear some of these shots and things that are happening with.

With, you know, snipers and just sft things down range is because, like, I. I don't think that the average person really thinks I'm how my mind works, but I'm like, man, that ammo literally went to the lowest bidder.

Or like, that javelin that this kid just launched, or the AT4 I'm carrying around was literally the lowest bidder.

And here we are, and we're expecting our snipers, the best of the best in the world, and you're getting just factory ammo.

It's been in a can since probably World War II.

Or even if they've come out with these new rounds, it's like, why are we not just putting an ext a little bit into making sure we have the best?

And it.

It blows my mind that we're able to accomplish so much with, like, the lowest bidder on everything that we're using in the military.

Yeah, I mean, I got to have a lot of cool stuff.

When I was in Ranger battalion and special operations, we got to do a lot of the cool stuff.

But, yeah, when it comes to marksmanship, I think there could be some room for improvement when it comes to the long range stuff, especially with the ammo?

Yeah.

Because.

Yeah, a lot of the ammo you are getting is like really low.

You know, it's really old and it's low quality for sure.

But some of it does get the job done.

I'm not gonna lie.

Like to hit a guy at 200 meters like with.

It's not a big deal.

Yeah.

But if I had to take some mild shots or thousand meter shots with a.308.

Yeah, it's gonna be hard with some of that ammo if I'm really trying to get a 9 inch target.

Pokemon.

Yeah, it's about.

So are we on your last deployment?

What are we.

You got.

You did five total.

Four.

Five.

Yeah.

So.

So okay, we were talking before we went on our Chris Kyle tangent.

Well, this is the baby or the AK47 deployment.

Okay.

So you now have learned some lessons.

You had a rock and get in your chamber and mess up some stuff and now you're providing overwatch.

You've learned you're full blown into sniper mode on this deployment.

Yep.

Okay, so how's this going for you?

It's going good.

I got a great team leader, leader named Andy Dutton and a guy named Ryan Flager.

He was my section leader and they taught me a lot.

And so I was out with Dutton one night and we were going after a guy named the Juggernaut.

And this was Juggernaut.

I gotta maybe be careful about saying some of this stuff, but dude, Juggernaut, let's just call him the Juggernaut.

All of it.

We left everything in Afghan.

What do we have to wor.

What are they going to do?

Actually Dan, we need to speak with you.

My name's not the Juggernaut.

We, we, we.

Yeah, we talked to, we heard your podcast.

We're gonna need to talk to all these people, especially the government guy was.

Named the Juggernaut was his.

His name.

And it was the sixth time we've gone after him.

So like oh damn.

This was a big high value target.

He had came into Pakistan or from Pakistan or for a few days and we were just trying to catch him.

So another call out.

So this gets to okay, I'm thinking where do I go to kill this guy?

And we do.

The call out is where they're surrounding the building.

But there's the black side, which is where the, the other side of where they're doing the call out.

So the black side is most likely where he would run from because it's away from where the call out's coming from.

So I'm like, okay, it's just like hunting.

It's not like anything crazy.

I'm saying, hey, I'm going to go on the be about 200 meters off to the backside of this building, and I'm going to see if he goes out.

Well, I also had planned for this because I'm thinking, if he's running, what did I need to hold on him in front of him if he's running?

Because if you're going 3 miles an hour, 6 miles an hour, 9 miles an hour, 12 miles an hour, big difference.

Differences in hold.

Going 3 miles an hour, about 200 meters, you're about 1.5 mil hold lead, something like that.

If you're at 12 miles an hour, you're looking at about an 8, 9 mil lean, which is a lot.

So let's break this down.

1 Mil at 100 meters, about, we'll call it 4 inches.

So 1 mil at 200 meters is 8 inches.

So 8 mils at 200 meters is 64 inches.

So that means I have to aim 64 inches in front of him.

That's 5ft, a little bit over in.

A split second like that.

Okay.

So I'm planning this out, and I'm thinking, okay, if he's running at 12 miles an hour, because he's probably in crocs or something, like, you know, like, okay, well, I'm gonna hold 8.

If he's, you know, walking, I'll hold 1.5, and I'll kind of get in the middle between there.

Well, they do the call out, and this guy starts running as fast as he can.

I still remember his face just like, freaking out.

And he starts running right at me and then paralleling me.

And there's a building that he's paralleling, and I'm about 200 meters away.

So I start engaging, and I'm way behind him, like, way behind him.

And I start realizing, wait, because it kicks in.

He's running.

I need a lead.

So I increase my lead.

Boom.

I see the round hit on the building behind him.

I increase again.

Boom, behind him, Boom, in front of him.

Boom, Closer, boom, behind him.

Boom, clipped him.

And I put him on the ground.

And he takes one big breath and puts his head over this little wall on the ground.

It's like just a little barrier.

I see his wallpaw.

He just takes one breath, and I right in his head and goes down.

And I'm just like, holy crap.

And then about a second from there, let's call it 5, 10 seconds, another guy comes out around the corner, and he's got something wrapped in his, his hands like it's a baby.

Like it looks exactly like he's carrying a baby.

And I was just thinking that was the first red flag, which they teach you this in sniper school about advance.

Them dudes ain't carrying babies.

What.

Not that part, but to teach you about, about red flags, like your advanced situational awareness.

Like, okay, your first red flag is that why would he be carrying a baby through this combat zone?

I wouldn't take my kid where there's.

And it wasn't just me shooting, there was other people shooting too.

Yeah.

So I was like, okay, well let me zoom in.

And so I zoom in on his, his blanket and it looks like something's coming shooting from there.

And that's like, that's like the second red flag.

Like, what is that?

And then I shine my laser on it.

This is nighttime, right?

All my missions are nighttime.

And I get this glint of like a barrel coming out.

And he just kind of like steps over the dead guy that I just shot.

And I was like, this is weird.

Like this guy isn't carrying a baby.

And I was going to be walking into a building within a few seconds.

I had to make a split second decision.

Do I shoot him or do I let him go into that room?

Because a lot of times how we lose Rangers overseas is barricaded shooters.

They go into rooms, they wait.

And I'm not just saying Rangers.

I know this is bigger on everybody, but we have lost a lot of people that are barricaded shooters.

Just like Holtz that I was telling you about Operation Red Dawn.

And so I decided to shoot him in the stomach though, to try to avoid the baby just in case.

And then he was on the ground and for about 40 minutes.

They're asking me, who was it?

What was that?

And I was like, I don't know.

It was either a baby or an AK47 siren.

And they're like, what?

And I'm like, it's either a baby or an ak.

I can't tell, but I think it's a barrel that's coming.

And I was kind of freaking out too.

Again, like really hard shots that I've had.

Yeah, it was like I didn't know because I didn't want him to get into that building and then us go and clear it and shoot us up.

So 40 minutes goes by.

I'm just like, longest 40 minutes of my life.

They go through, they find that he is.

Has a fully loaded AK47 with extra mags in this blanket.

So good.

Good decision.

Oh, absolutely.

But it was.

It was freaking me out because if I killed a bit, I still, to this day, I'd be.

I'd be.

You know, it'd be hard to live without, I feel like.

And I've got friends that have issues with.

With having they killed kids.

Justified because they had, you know, SFs on them.

But, you know, that's.

That's one of those moments that I still have nightmares about.

Like, I have nightmares about the guy coming out.

I have nightmares about the.

The guns not working and stuff like that.

Or I'm missing equipment, getting ready for deployments.

I have a lot of these dreams every single night.

It's just military dreams.

And I don't.

I don't even watch war movies anymore or anything.

It's just still stuck with me for years.

But, yeah, that was the baby or the AK47 story was my story of, like, trust your gut.

Like, that guy was going in that room with a fully loaded ak, waiting for my guys to go in there.

So, you know.

But those red flags of saying this, the signs, and to be like, okay, this.

Something's not right here.

So you ended up killing the Juggernaut.

So it's funny because after that, there was a huge procession.

So a lot of times after we're done leaving the area, we'll watch it with drones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, they're showing me the drone footage.

They called me into the talk and go, litzy, you killed somebody tonight.

And I was like, what?

And there's this huge procession, maybe 250 people with cars going through it all in military ranks, and they were doing a funeral.

And I go, I killed the Juggernaut.

And I was like, telling everybody, and everyone's like, shut up, Litzy.

Didn't kill the Juggernaut.

I was like, bull crap.

Look at that.

I killed him.

So, yeah, it was kind of like that deployment.

I was like, I got the Juggernaut.

The Juggernaut Killer.

You're like, I don't care.

I'm taking it.

I don't know if they can.

I'm sure, like, that was the thing, though, at my level, I didn't get to know, like.

Like, yeah.

Who these people were, why I was going after them.

Like, which is kind of, if you think about it, by putting our sniper, anybody in these positions to take another life.

And then, you know, this is why I feel a lot of us have so many issues, because there was never closure.

You just like, did I make the right decision, killing that instead of them Coming back like, hey, this.

This is what you guys did.

This is how many lives this guy is US Soldiers or Marines, this guy has killed.

Like, we.

You never hear any of that stuff.

It's.

It's always just like, okay, on to the next mission.

Yeah, I feel like it would be nice, but then at the same time I get opsec and, you know, we can't just have all of our troops knowing everything that's going on.

But I feel in a special operations unit, you guys can shut the fuck up.

Well, for the most part, seals, but they talk about everything.

But yeah, we like to.

We were over deployments.

We didn't get to have cell phones.

No, we didn't have any.

I have like two pictures of me overseas and it was from combat.

Camera taking it there.

There was no cameras.

There is no taking.

You know, having a little I love me book of photos when we got back home, or videos or GoPro footage, which I get a little bit upset sometimes because it's like you see people with some of this stuff and it's like, well, I wish I could have had some for sure.

My kids or something.

But no, we were all business when we were there.

It was like we didn't get a drink or do any of that kind of stuff or like have our, you know, beers or how to take pictures.

It was just get on the ground and within 24 hours you're on a mission.

And then we do our last mission.

Within 24 hours, we're out of there.

And it's about a four month deployment.

Yeah.

Unless my last one was that six month deployment was the one that I was talking about.

That was like a double one.

Yeah.

Which I know that's not that a lot of people do like 18 month deployments.

So it's still a short deployment, but yeah, to me it was a Longer1.

Yeah, four months would be nice.

Just tear a bunch of shit up and leave.

That's how it was, man.

It was literally like four months of just like.

Like get your get.

Get your ranger on and then get out of there.

That's nice.

Yeah, it was.

They treat us pretty good.

Like, even our.

Our housing was like, pretty.

I mean, they were like conex buildings that were done up, so they were kind of nicer.

Like, our chow halls were really nice on Kanahar.

Like, I don't know, they took care of us.

Like, I know a lot of guys that, you know, I know that we help at the Ranch Foundation.

I hear their stories and it's like, like, what did you do.

And this here some of the stories of patrols, like, day patrols, and I never had to do a day patrol, like, you know, and deal with IEDs.

Like, yeah, we.

I had one ID go off.

My medic in front of me.

Doc Powell, he got blown up on that third deployment, stepped on a mine right in front of me.

And he.

They.

He lost both his legs.

And they actually ended up parading his leg around the village.

And we were going to go in to get his leg, but there's so many IEDs, they decided not to have us go back in there.

They.

How close was he when he stepped on the mine?

I was probably, like, not very close, like 40 meters.

But it seemed like.

Because it seemed like it was close.

I just see this big go up in the sky, and I was like, what the hell was that?

I thought maybe they breached or something.

And I was like.

And then I just see your dog, Powell, just.

Just in the middle of the night, scream his head off.

And I was like, that was my first idea I've ever experienced.

And I was like, oh, my.

That was mine.

And then we started pulling security, and we're realizing that there's, like, an ammo can off here on this trail.

And I'm like, what's an ammo can?

And, you know, you hear about them putting stuff out, and I start realizing we're in, like, a minefield.

Like, there's traps everywhere, and so we're just told to stay put.

They come and pick the helicopters right where they dropped us off.

They come pick us up.

Up.

Because there was just.

The whole place was rigged to blow.

Damn, dude.

And we were gonna go get his leg.

This town was parading this dude's leg around like a war trophy.

They had it on, like, a stick or something in town, and they put it up on, like, a flag pole, but I didn't get to see it or anything.

That's just what our first arm, first armed Barrett was like.

He's like, one of the toughest first irons I had.

And he was going to have us go in and to get his.

His leg back, but.

But they turned it down because it was too.

Too risky.

Can you imagine losing dudes trying to retrieve a guy's leg?

Dude?

I know, but it was really humiliating having his leg like, you know, they're just.

For sure.

Yeah, we got this, America.

It's like, oh, we can come in there and destroy you guys if we want to, but we're gonna take it easy.

You call it JDAM in on exactly.

Like, you have no idea what we can do to you guys right now.

Put a 500 pounder right on the heel of that foot and I would have solved that village.

Yeah, I've seen a couple 500 pounder shot right in front of me.

I get had some like, rocks sprinkle on me from the.

The blast and stuff.

What's that like being on the ground when a 500 pounder hits?

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was about a thousand meters away.

We were one click away.

You got to be a click away.

And we were.

There's this building with.

That was ready to blow.

What do you call it?

It.

We called it like Bosco grab what the keyword code word is, but it's when you realize that.

Or landslide.

You ever heard that term?

No.

Yeah, that's where the whole building's ready to blow.

And it's like, get out of here.

Okay.

So we had snipers on the roof and they called landslide and they jumping off this like 20 foot roof.

And we ended up pulling back a kilometer.

And then they brought in the fast movers.

And all I remember is just like, like just two really quick and then boom, boom.

And yeah, then you just maybe 20 seconds later, you're getting hit with rocks and stuff a kilometer away.

So that's one of two times.

Yeah, I've seen those go off.

And it's supportive for sure.

When you see that you have that kind of firepower behind you, like watching your back.

That's why I didn't feel.

I didn't feel scared too much when I'd go out because I had everybody in the sky.

We had planned everything.

It's nighttime.

We're all sneaky with our night vision, you know, that's what I try to tell other people that are like, oh, I don't do anything cool.

Like you, you're a ranger.

I'm like, dude, you did a day patrol in Iraq.

Like some of those Iraq stories you hear, or just any of the stories I hear of doing convoys and like route clearances.

We had a guy that's been doing route clearances in Iraq that was like insane stories.

Yeah, just taking that.

Dude, I have the funniest night raid story.

Well, I have a bunch of them, but.

But it was like one of our first, like official.

We get to go out and I get to take my squad, my little fire team, you know, and we got the Iraqi army with us.

And this one Iraqi soldier, he was.

He's one of the largest human beings, like as far as just big.

And then his head was so Large that they found the biggest kevlar for him and it looked like a little like yamaka on his head.

It just, it's like a mushroom.

It didn't, it didn't fit and he couldn't get it.

His head was so big he couldn't chin strap it.

So it just dangled old.

Anyways, we go and we get the house.

We're gonna go in and we gotta go detain everybody in this house.

And they want us to be all like Ricky recon and.

And we get in and there's a light on in the kitchen and so we, I come along the wall and I got this giant ass like seven foot Iraqi dude.

I got a picture of him.

We called him Tiny was his call sign.

Go figure.

And anyways I flip my MVGs up because we're gonna like peek in this window.

Well, I didn't remember how far they stick out of the helmet.

So as I'm coming up right as I like make eye contact, dude, I'm just like, like scrape the mounts on the glass from it because we're, we're.

But he's like kind of holding me and all these people, these Iraqis are sitting at this table like doing some game and they all just interned and he's kind of like holding me and I'm on this windowsill and I just make all this screeching noise on the window and I just, just stare straight out like get the on the ground.

I didn't know what to do.

So we all go running in.

Nobody was even there that we needed.

It was the biggest show.

But I blew the whole thing by scraping my MVGs on this windows.

Sounds like a funny like meme video.

Literally, literally on this window I was like.

And this is why I belong in a mechanized vehicle with heavy machine guns.

I was like, like I'm not made for this.

Yeah, it was one of those nights we're dying.

Like I'm laughing.

My boys are.

We're laughing so hard.

We, we'd always make the Iraqis going first just in case it was like fortified or anything like, well, we could waste them first.

And so yeah, they all went running in and detained everybody and nobody was there.

We were looking for.

It was a big show, so.

But yeah, it's, it's tough to get used to nighttime stuff like just walking depth perception.

Yeah.

I mean aqueducts, those little irrigations.

You go to jump over them and.

You realize you didn't jump far enough.

Yeah, you end up on your face and your mvg.

These smash into your eyes.

We lost a grenade one night.

One of the guys fell in a ditch and lost his grenade.

And dude, our gunny at the time was the biggest piece of.

But where he fell our house, you know, because everything, you know, we'd go set ambushes in the palm groves and wait for people to walk and stuff in the middle of night because they were going down to the palm groves and digging up their caches and then they'd rebury them.

So we were just waiting, doing all that dumb.

Just freezing your ass off all night.

But his name was Akin, R.I. if man, I we've looked for this because he.

This kid joined the Marine Corps because he saw a commercial of the obstacle course and he's like, that's what I want to do.

Told the recruiter, I just want to do the obstacle course.

That's his thing.

He was one of our smallest marines in the battalion.

He was a.

He would drink 30 beers in a night.

He would be blacked out drunk the next day.

We would have to.

He would come out in formation, jeans, a Marine corps boots, a sneaker on and like a flannel or maybe his blouse like that.

Drunk from the night before where we would be dressing him.

He would get information and this dude would run up, he'd run three miles, do the pull ups.

He would just blow through.

We would have him in.

Our gunny would march us in formation because he was so drunk he couldn't walk on his own.

So we'd have to hold him up in formation.

Going to work anyways, this kid, he ends up getting out of the Marine Corps and disappears.

We've been looking for him for years.

The last like nobody's heard from him.

We've like checked all like the, the.

The hospitals, the, all the, the records and everything in his last known location.

But damn, what was I going to say about that kid?

What was I saying?

Just lost my train of thought.

Eck and road.

What did Eckenro do?

Oh, the grenade.

So he falls, right?

So our house sat above the palm groves on a road.

There was like our house, then a road and then it dropped down into the palm groves along the Euphrates river and he fell right there.

And because of the MVGs, he's all up one night and, and do.

We made him go back and run and go grid his.

Because our gun, he was like, you need to grenade.

We're like, you got to be kidding me.

I was like, dude, we're all like dropped gear for the night.

We made it back in our house.

And I was like, all right, Eck and road, get Johnson, and you guys are gonna run and go find this grenade.

We're gonna be on the roof.

So there's like six of us on the roof of the house.

And, like, here are two little dudes.

They go running in there, the shadows running through the town.

They go down in the palm grove and disappear.

We're, like, trying to watch with our MVGs.

It was one of those, like, if they got caught, they're moments they come running back, and I'm like, you get it?

He, like, holds the gre.

But, yeah, they're all from an mvg from falling in a ditch because nobody had depth perception.

But yeah, are interesting to get used to.

Did he make.

Did you guys.

But he got in trouble if he didn't go back and get there.

Dude, our gunny would have burned him.

Yeah, he was that type of dude.

He was.

Our gunny was the dude.

He went on one patrol, and I think we were there.

We were there for months.

He went on one patrol the whole deployment.

He was just a coward.

It was.

It was his first deployment, and he had to do it because he was such a turd.

And then he had to.

He had to do that deployment to get promoted.

So he just sat in the COC upstairs the whole time and just did.

You'd come in at night and freaking from a patrol.

Middle of the night, you're done.

Third patrol of the day, you'd come in, we'd be laughing and joking, you know, just being marines.

And dude, this dude would come down and be like, kick the door open.

You need to shut the up.

We're trying to sleep in this house.

And I just look at him like, bro, he just sits in a COC drinking coffee all day.

And here, this is our third patrol today.

Yeah, you know, we just froze our asses off walking in the palm groves because I was there both times in the winter.

And this dude has the audacity and is perfectly the.

You know, the black fleeces that you guys get.

Yeah, the army I stole.

I've talked about it for we.

My V. My boat.

My boy's vehicle went down.

We were working on it.

We're on Al Asad, and we're the, like, the motor T lot for the tanks were.

Was right next to the army supply, and we were.

And so for us.

Us, if that's your vehicle, that's your home.

So we're kind of living next in this lot that's locked up at night, and they got a couple like, you know, the spotlights that are working.

I saw the army the day before, and they opened up a conex box, and he was divvying out those black fleeces.

Dude, I'm in a flight suit with, like, a green Marine corps hoodie.

Like, that's it.

That's all we had.

Granted, we're in vehicles, like, in our tanks, so they're warm, but it's still freezing.

So I was like, bro, I'm getting us jackets tonight.

My boys are like.

And I was.

That Marine.

There was no, like, talking me out of it, dude.

I'm doing it.

And so I wouldn't get bolt cutters.

Middle of the night, we're working on his vehicle, and I'm just like, cut this giant hole in the fence, dude.

I walk over the Conex box.

Course, army doesn't lock up, dude, I go in there, and all the boxes are all stacked, and they all have sizes on them, dude.

I'm just hucking these giant cardboard boxes of army black fleeces.

I'd run back in X watch.

I'm like, another extra large.

Dude, my whole platoon, everybody had black.

Not everybody.

We left some dudes out, but everybody got black fleeces.

I still have mine.

It's melted.

But, yeah, dude, we ended up getting that from the army.

We ended up stealing a bunch of their.

In Al Assad.

I don't even know how I got on that story.

But, yeah, it was one of those things I tried to keep warm because it was so freezing, bro, we had no gear.

It was miserable.

But, yeah, we just took advantage because obviously the army was not paying attention to the.

We're like, nah, take it from the army.

We're doing this 100.

They'll get more.

Yeah.

I had a friend, Raul Adams.

He was.

I was just reminding their grenade, like, going back because he was literally taking contact.

And then he was.

He was maneuvering and realized that his suppressor was gone.

Oh, God.

And he had to under fire, go back, try to find it.

It.

I think somebody else found it or something and gave it to him.

But, yeah, I was just thinking, was a grenade be good.

Like, would you.

We need to send people back.

If I lost a grenade.

I don't know.

He knew where he fell because it was.

We were literally coming.

You definitely don't want them to grab it.

And for sure.

For sure we're coming out of the pong grove where our house is, like, maybe 200 yards up the hill, you know, sitting there.

So we're.

We were right there, but it wasn't far enough where it was like, hey, get everybody geared back up.

We got to go look for this.

It was like, hey, grab your boy, and we're gonna get on the roof.

Run your ass down there.

That was probably one of the funniest things to see.

These two Marines, like, no gear, just.

Just dipping with MVGs in the middle of the night.

Just in the shadows, and there they go.

We're laughing.

You know how it is.

Like, you just make fun of some.

Like, one of those is lids.

You remember the little, like, flashlights?

They're like the IR flashlights, bro.

It's a Marine, dude.

You're a Ranger.

We do not get.

You guys get more like.

Like, what's up with the funding with the Marines?

Because, like, we don't have funding.

We get everything that the army retired.

I just.

I've never understood that.

Why the.

Because I would consider, like, Marine infantry, like, premier from Army Infantry.

I think, like, the basic.

I would technically consider Marine infantry would be equivalent to, like, Army Rangers, really, without the gear.

100.

Like, you mean with the training and everything?

Not.

Not the training.

That's the car.

The training.

Like, yeah, that's what I think is separates is the money.

I like pissing off Rangers by saying that, because Marines will get it done every time.

And obviously, you guys got the training and the budget and all that that goes.

It's a budget.

It's a.

Because if you can get well.

And I feel like with Rangers, you get those guys to go through a little extra suck.

It just takes a different type of person to go through that suck.

And it's not like we're getting paid much more or anything.

For sure.

Just demanding more from us.

Yeah.

No, I would not compare Marine grunts and army grunts.

I think that it's night and day, personally, just because of the.

I think the mindset alone would separate Marines from Marines.

Yeah, Marines have a very tough mindset of, like.

I mean.

Yeah, you guys have the kick down the door if it's in your way kind of mindset.

Oh, we're going through the whole house and then through the next one and through the next one to get to it if we have to.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm glad I went the Ranger out, but I was, like, super pumped to be a Marine.

I was really disappointed.

And then when I went to army, they didn't let me be a infantry.

0311 Is what I guess would be called.

It was 11 Charlie, which is the mortar man.

And at first I was like, what the hell is A mortar man.

And then they were like.

They showed me the tube, the 81.

And I was like, this is the green army man that I used to throw away as a kid.

Nobody wanted the mortarman.

And so I wrote my drill sergeant.

I was like, dear Sergeant Franks, what the hell is a mortarman?

You screwed me over.

He probably laughed getting that letter.

But my life is over.

It actually turned out.

I'm glad I went the mortar out for the first few years.

But a lot of people go mortars and they go somewhere else to go to the line or dogs or snipers.

So it's like.

It's a good way to transition.

Yeah.

Last deployment.

So now you've gotten some time under your belt.

You got back from your fourth deployment.

That's when you went through sniper school, technically, at that point.

Yep.

Okay.

So.

But you've already had some time as a sniper, obviously, and.

Which is probably pretty wild to be out there on these missions and everything, and knowing a lot of what's going on, because obviously you're working with a lot of these guys, but then going to sniper school.

So then you go on to your final deployment as an actual sniper.

Right.

There's two sniper schools I went to, though.

Oh, okay.

What are those?

The Army Sniper School, which is the one you've heard of, the DA Army Sniper School.

And then what's called sif sic Special Forces Sniper Course.

It used to be called sodic.

Okay.

Special Operations Target Indication Course or something like that.

That.

That's where Special Forces sends all their snipers.

So Rangers get a few slots each year to go to the Special Forces one.

I gotta go.

Because I was a SNE senior sniper at this point.

I was a section leader for Delta Company.

And, yeah, that's where I learned a lot about observation camera work.

We did a lot of stuff with cameras.

We got really into stalking.

It kind of had shooting down at this point by then, you know, out to 800 was kind of like.

Like on silhouette targets.

Wasn't too hard, but the observation point.

And, yeah, working with cameras was really cool with the.

What do you mean, working with cameras?

Yeah, so we get like a Canon 40 SLR, I think it was called.

And we would be able to set it up and we'd need to take pictures of all four parts of this target compound.

Right.

So for the assault force.

So they knew exactly where the breach points were, where the entry points, all that stuff.

So we're observing an area, and we'd have to go around, sneak around in our gillies, set up A camera behind like a bush and you know, cut out some of the bush so that way the camera can burn through it without any obstruction.

And then you would take a picture at night by opening the aperture setting and letting it sit for like a minute and then take a picture.

There's like ISO settings and different things you can do to get better pictures at night.

So we did a lot of that out in the woods.

And then we'd have a computer and download everything, send it to the assault force, the, you know, the mock up assault first or whatever it was.

So you're now almost learning the reconnaissance side of the sniper team.

So your, your job would be to go in, okay, here's the battlefield and then relaying everything back.

Here's the, this is where you come in.

So you're kind of painting a more in depth picture for the ground forces that would be coming in.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah.

Knowing so that when they get to the target area they're like, okay, well this is the, the routes in.

Here's maybe a route that is obstructed or can't get in.

You know, maybe there's barricades or something.

Yep.

Yeah.

And the different windows, we need to make sure we mark all the windows and how to mark windows and things like that.

You know, like alpha is always at the top.

That's what you're like top level windows.

And Zulu is like the bottom level.

And then in between there is your letters.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's a lot of what we would do.

Like when you're trying to engage targets in a building, you would say like Alpha 4.

If there's like, if you're looking at a hotel room, well, you would have a hard time being like, oh, the enemy's in that window over there.

What window?

There's a hundred of them.

So you have to designate every row with a letter Alpha through Zulu.

And then you would have each one left to right, 1, 2, 3, 4.

So you're building a grid.

Building a grid.

So that way you can go Alpha 4 and they go right to the, the window.

So it's like how you mark things too.

But I didn't do a lot of the camera work on, in combat or anything like that.

That was just for the schoolhouse for the most part.

But what was the best part about going through that special operation?

Sniper school.

What was what stood out to you the most?

Working with SF guys.

Because they're so chill.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Never getting screamed like a man.

Treat you like a man.

I was like, because I got There I was at E5 and they were like E7s and I call them sergeant and they'd be like, like my name is Dave.

And so I'd be like, oh, chill with that sergeant thing.

Yeah, they were really cool.

I like.

And yeah, the special forces guys are really cool to, to work with.

So that was really cool.

Yeah, I mean one thing that wasn't cool was like my, you know, this is kind of hard to talk about, but my sniper partner, I still talk to him every other weekend or so, but he got pulled from the schoolhouse because he was involved in a murder case.

So.

No, while you guys are together, while.

We were in sniper school, we're at the range and they go rangers.

We need you to come up here.

And my friend, he's like, dan, I need you to take care of my family and sell my guns.

And like, because he kind of had an idea he was about to go away.

I don't think.

First let me say I don't think that he's guilty the way that he said he's guilty.

And he's actually.

The Innocence Project is taking on his case.

He's in jail right now.

And so he may be getting out, but he got involved in a high profile case and he got pulled from the course and had to end up going to jail.

And so I was just gotten talked to.

The whole course was like, what's going on?

What's going on with them?

What's going on with them?

I was like, I have no idea.

I just, you know, and I talk to him now and you know, like, can't tell me anything about the case obviously.

But yeah, that was really hard because we were partners and we were getting ready for the use of sock sniper competition together.

And so that's where like all the best shooters in the world from different countries come in.

And I was representing Ranger battalion, so is he.

And I had to start over with this SF guy that was a jtac.

It wasn't even a sniper cool dude named Corey on a third group.

But he, he wasn't like my other partner.

We'd be in train for like six months together.

And so.

So we are placing like 11th out of like 24 or something.

Not too bad.

But seals place like last, so that's all I care about.

As long as they're not first.

Yeah.

No, but yeah.

So that was a big train up for the use of sock comp, which was really.

It was a crazy competition.

The prize table at that competition had like rifles, suppressors, all sorts of pistols.

Like, not like, like all sorts of stuff.

If you got first place, you're coming with like 100 grand worth of gear.

Really?

Oh, yeah, it was no kidding.

And even the swag bags for everybody was just like pretty dope.

Yeah.

But yeah, so that was pretty cool.

Just getting ready for that competition, the schoolhouse.

I didn't really learn much more about the shooting because at that point I'd had, was it one or two deployments as a sniper now and then, like all these court courses that I went to.

And so I feel like once you've.

Master the basics, fundamentals of shooting, I mean, how much more shooting through slits and different holes and ranges?

I mean, obviously you could.

There's always ways to advance.

But I mean, killing somebody.

Killing is killing somebody with a long gun.

So, yeah, there's only so much you can really.

I mean, yeah, there's always advancement, but once you learn how to hit a target at 800 meters and then silhouette, you're like, okay, I got this.

Can hard miss a 800 meter silhouette when you're dialed in.

Yep.

But, yeah, but after that, that's when I went on my, my last and final deployment in 2014.

This deployment was the culmination event of my entire military career, really.

Okay.

Culmination of everything as a Ranger, as a sniper, even as a mortarman.

Just everything came into play on this one mission.

This is that mission I was talking about called Dread Anarchy.

Okay.

And this was in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

We had gotten told that outside, to the west of the city, right to the north of the Res desert.

So the Res desert is a huge desert right to the south of Kandahar.

Gigantic.

And right when it ended, there's this wedge between like a mountain range and the desert that kind of wedges into a funnel point that you can kind of come into.

Well, they were going to have us go in and disrupt this whole area because there's enemy in the area, and we didn't know how many, but we were going to go in and disrupt it for the.

The coalition forces that were clearing their way through the next day.

What do you mean by disrupt?

Go in and kill every bad guy that's in there?

Okay, yeah, which I'll get to that.

Because I didn't.

Because usually I'm used to kill capture missions.

Every mission as a Ranger I was ever on was a kill capture mission.

Most of the times it's capture kill if you have to, but.

So for a week we're planning this mission and I'm using the drones to look all over the area to look for IEDs.

I'm not looking for IEDs.

I'm looking for disruption in the Earth, like, different thermal.

I think they were using LiDAR or something.

And so we found that, okay, this was a clear spot to get into.

And I was looking for routes because my big baby was routes, and this was a big one.

So I was like, I don't want to screw this up.

Well, I first saw it first Iron Vinny, he was like, this was with 2nd.

2Nd Platoon Alpha Company at 2nd Ranger Battalion.

And he was like, we're gonna come into the red desert, boys.

We're gonna walk through the desert, and they'll never see us coming.

Say this with all due respect, First Iron Venn, but I'm like.

But I'm like, we're not going through the desert, dude.

I'm like, that's because by the time.

I'm thinking, by the time we get to where all these potential bad guys are gonna be, we're gonna be smoked.

Like, how are we supposed to get into a gunfight?

And everyone's just.

And we have people falling out in the desert.

Because this was a 4 kilometer movement through dunes that were like 20 foot just doing this.

Oh, God.

So I was like.

And, you know, sand, like, hours, and then we go to a gunfight.

I was like, no.

And so I got with the helicopters, and I was like, you gotta do something.

He's gonna want us to walk through this desert.

And he's like, well, the helicopter pilots said, no, we weren't gonna do it because of the rotary washer.

It could get into their engines or something.

They can make up anything.

So then y.

They're like, we don't want to do it either.

So he's like, all right, well, where do you want to go?

Let's.

And I was like, we're going to go on.

The other side of this mountain is about 3km away.

We did acoustic modeling, which is where they look to see where the sound is going to be.

Crazy.

Yeah, they can see, like, how far the sound waves are going.

So we tucked ourselves behind this mountain, and we started to infill.

Now, this infill was really tough, too, because there was all these giant bushes that were, like, 8ft tall, like, really big.

Just desert bushes.

And we're breaking brush through them, going, trying to find paths through these bushes.

And we're the mountains on our.

To the south of us on our right, and we're just paralleling the mountain.

And all of a sudden, I see a guy off onto these buildings.

And I think we had taken a little short halt.

And I was just zooming over there, and I saw a guy peeking around the corner with a ICOM or some sort of motherfucker.

Yeah.

And I'm like, dude, this reminds me of back in my third deployment.

And so I was like, okay.

And I called, told Pl like, hey, we got a guy calling up our position.

It looks like he's got icom.

He sees us.

He's like, let's just leave him alone.

So I'm like, yeah, okay, we'll leave him alone.

Not 30 seconds later, the ISR platform, which is the drones are saying, there's six movers moving towards your position.

They look armed.

And I was like, okay, now we got six guys moving towards our position.

I'm just getting to the release point because I created the whole route.

So we get to the release point, I can't see shit.

Like, there's bushes 8ft tall everywhere.

So how am I supposed to provide overwatch to the sniper?

Well, luckily, this is a good learning point is I had a secondary plan, right.

Of where I was going to go in case I couldn't see.

Because the drone footage, you couldn't see.

You could see the bushes, but you couldn't see how big they were.

I thought they were like three foot bushes.

Yeah.

So the side of this mountain that we've been paralleling had a spur on it.

So my plan was to go up on top of the spur so I can see the whole valley.

Okay.

This whole valley from where I was across was probably a thousand meters.

Okay.

And then, so we get to the release point, and these six movers, they're still moving towards our position, and they're sparkling with the.

The infrared.

How did this guy see you at night?

They.

They don't see us.

They're maneuvering.

No, I'm talking to the dude that was calling you.

I don't know, because we're making a ton of noise.

Okay.

All right.

I don't know.

Like, I heard of elephants.

He heard the helicopter because it wasn't too far from where we landed.

So he was like a scout of some sort.

He was like, early warning system.

Got it.

Okay.

And obviously I didn't get a chance to ask him or anything, but I was at the release point and I. I see this sparkle from the infrared strobe with the six guys underneath it.

And I was like, okay, that's about 300 meters away.

We need to get to the top of that mountain now so we can see these guys.

Because I know once we can see them, I can kill them.

And I'm in my mind just like, we have to get to where we can see these guys.

So we start maneuvering towards the.

The mountain.

And I get up there, and I'm smoked.

Everybody on this info afterwards told me they were just smoked because it was a hard infill.

And we got to the top of the mountain, and my sniper partner got up there just before me and was like, litz.

I got six guys with AKs and RPGs right in front of me, and I look at him, and I look down, and then I see them with the infrared on them, because I had been going up this mountain, keeping them to my back, just trying to get to the top, and they were only like 200 meters away from us, maybe 150 meters, like, close.

And so.

So I get up there, and I start calming down because I like, I know we can start shooting these people.

And as a ranger, that's like.